The paper presents an additional strategy to mitigate tropical deforestation: intensifying agricultural and forestry production by providing shifting cultivators with alternatives to slash and burn agriculture. This strategy is largely absent from current policy papers because they tend to focus on forestry or environmental sectors ignoring agriculture even though agriculture is the main proximate cause of tropical deforestation. A series of alternatives to slash and burn agriculture which have been developed in the past twenty years at research level are briefly described. It is recommended that alternatives to slash and burn be incorporated into current policies to mitigate deforestation and that a worldwide deforestation reduction program be put into effect in the key deforesting countries of the world.
Publication year
2023
Authors
Language
English
Keywords
agroforestry, deforestation, shifting cultivation, soil, traditional farming, tropics
