Why Forests Are Important for Global Poverty Alleviation: a Spatial Explanation

By William D. Sunderlin, Sonya Dewi, A. Puntodewo, Daniel Müller, A. Angelsen, Michael Epprecht. 2008

233 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Forests have been declared important for the well-being of the poor because of the kinds of goods and services that they provide. We asked whether forests are important for the poor not only because of the kinds of goods and services they provide, but also because they tend to be located where the poor are. We conducted a spatial analysis to ascertain the degree of spatial association between poverty and forests in seven countries: Brazil, Honduras, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, Indonesia, and Vietnam. For most of these countries, there was a significant positive correlation between high natural forest cover and high poverty rate (the percentage of the population that is poor) and between high forest cover and low poverty density (the number of poor per unit area). We explain the findings and discuss policy implications and topics for future research.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1d76d63d745ab43405ff24b6aa5480830843794e

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In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

Forests, Livelihoods, and Conservation: Broadening the Empirical Base (2014, background): “(iii) Forest-rich areas offer little leverage for development policy interventions In continuation of the previous point, areas rich in natural forest areas typically exhibit a high poverty incidence, but due to low population numbers poverty densities typically remain low (Sunderlin et al., 2008).”
Managing the Miombo Woodlands of Southern Africa: Policies, Incentives and Options for the Rural Poor (2010, unknown): “Main maps from Sunderlin et al. (2007).”
Improving diets with wild and cultivated biodiversity from across the landscape (2015, background): “…pathway: although forests and forest products may contribute to income that can support food security (Pimentel et al. 1997; Angelsen et al. 2014), most communities that live close to forests are poorer than those who live further away from forests (Angelsen and Wunder 2003; Sunderlin et al. 2008).”
The Role of Forest-Related Income in Household Economies and Rural Livelihoods in the Border-Region of Southern China (2013, background): “This is largely in recognition of the significant relationship between forest areas and poverty (Sunderlin et al., 2008; World Bank, 2001a,b, 2004), and the emerging imperative that forests could, and should, have a far greater role in meeting the Millennium Development Goal’s poverty alleviation…”
Designing and Implementing Effective REDD + Policies: A Forest Transition Approach (2013, background): “Analyses of forest cover and census data throughout the tropics demonstrate a strong positive correlation between forest cover and poverty rates (Sunderlin et al. 2008b).”