Sustainable Use of Tropical Forests: A Plea for a Landscape View

The following chapter shows, for the example of Ecuador, how a combination of conservation payments to protect the existing natural forest, subsidies to re-establish pastures on abandoned lands and forestry measures (reforestation of abandoned lands and sustainable low-impact management of parts of the natural forest) can lead to the sustainable use and conservation of tropical forests. The means toward this goal are provided by an integrative and risk-sensitive land-use model on the landscape scale, in which all available land-use options are considered simultaneously to make use of synergies. Subsidies to encourage the re-establishment of pastures on abandoned lands mitigate land scarcity, as a consequence of which agricultural prices go down and the pressure on natural forests is relieved. The landscape approach described here demonstrates the feasibility of halting the deterioration of tropical mountain rain forests and its ecosystem services. It is, however, based on a somewhat still theoretical and general model, which needs further refinement to be applicable on a more local scale.