The International Politics of Declining Forests

Abstract

Can forest resources be managed in a more sustainable way? What has the global dialogue on forests contributed to our understanding of the nature of the problem at hand? Environmental problems have become one of the most serious issues of international politics. The demand for governance in world affairs has never been greater. The actions of environmental movements and the subsequent increase in environmental awareness have exposed the need to pursue environmental issues at an international level, and one of the most important of these issues is the declining forests. Since the first observations of deforestation, from the end of the nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War, the problem was confined to the temperate latitudes. From the end of the Second World War, until the Earth Summit (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), 1992) the balance of the problem and hence the debate shifted to the tropics. The Earth Summit exposed the dangers of the irreplaceable loss of biodiversity, and since then the topic of debate has been expanded again to include the temperate latitudes.