Extreme Conflict and Tropical Forests [Hardcover]

This book provides a timely insight into the relationships between extreme conflict, the international trade in forest products, and the social, economic and environmental condition of tropical forests and their human communities. It explores the underlying causes and the social and environmental consequences of conflict in tropical forest areas. The book includes case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

There are many compelling reasons for policymakers to pay more attention to forested regions and invest more resources there. Forests provide valuable products and en- ronmental services and several hundred million extremely poor people live near them. Perhaps the most compelling reason of all, however, is that unless policymakers take forest governance seriously and respond better to the needs of the people living there, these regions will continue to be breeding grounds for violent con?ict, banditry, and illicit crops. From Nicaraguas Atlantic Coast to the jungles of Cambodia, there are several dozen countries around the world that have experienced severe breakdowns in law and order in their forested regions. In many of these cases those breakdowns had widespread economic, social, and political consequences that have threatened entire societies. You would think that after all of the suffering over the last few decades in the forested regions of Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, the two Congos, Liberia, Mozambique, Philippines, Solomon Islands, Nepal, Angola, Rwanda, Nicaragua, Cote ? dIvoire, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Sudan, Uganda, and Vietnam people would begin to take note. After all, they dont call it jungle warfare for nothing.1. Tropical forests and extreme conflict; D. Donovan et al.- 2. Between war and peace: violence and accommodation in the Cambodian logging sector; P. Le Billon, S. Springer.- 3. Greed or grievance in West Africas forest wars?; R. de Koning.- 4. Nicaraguas lc,