Dataset Information

Unsustainable development pathways caused by tropical deforestation.

ABSTRACT: Global sustainability strategies require assessing whether countries' development trajectories are sustainable over time. However, sustainability assessments are limited because losses of natural capital and its ecosystem services through deforestation have not been comprehensively incorporated into national accounts. We update the national accounts of 80 nations that underwent tropical deforestation from 2000 to 2012 and evaluate their development trajectories using weak and strong sustainability criteria. Weak sustainability requires that countries do not decrease their aggregate capital over time. We adopt a strong sustainability criterion that countries do not decrease the value of their forest ecosystem services with respect to the year 2000. We identify several groups of countries: countries, such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India, that present sustainable development trajectories under both weak and strong sustainability criteria; countries, such as Brazil, Peru, and Indonesia, that present weak sustainable development but fail the strong sustainability criterion as a result of rapid losses of ecosystem services; countries, such as Madagascar, Laos, and Papua New Guinea, that present unsustainable development pathways as a result of deforestation; and countries, such as Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone, in which deforestation aggravates already unsustainable pathways. Our results reveal a large number of countries where tropical deforestation is both damaging to nature and not compensated by development in other sectors, thus compromising the well-being of their future generations.

SUBMITTER: Carrasco LR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5507632 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Unsustainable development pathways caused by tropical deforestation.

Carrasco Luis Roman LR Nghiem Thi Phuong Le TPL Chen Zhirong Z Barbier Edward B EB

Science advances 20170712 7

Global sustainability strategies require assessing whether countries' development trajectories are sustainable over time. However, sustainability assessments are limited because losses of natural capital and its ecosystem services through deforestation have not been comprehensively incorporated into national accounts. We update the national accounts of 80 nations that underwent tropical deforestation from 2000 to 2012 and evaluate their development trajectories using weak and strong sustainabili ...[more]

PMID: 28706988

Similar Datasets

Project description:Protected areas (PAs) have been established to conserve tropical forests, but their effectiveness at reducing deforestation is uncertain. To explore this issue, we combined high resolution data of global forest loss over the period 2000-2012 with data on PAs. For each PA we quantified forest loss within the PA, in buffer zones 1, 5, 10 and 15 km outside the PA boundary as well as a 1 km buffer within the PA boundary. We analysed 3376 tropical and subtropical moist forest PAs in 56 countries over 4 continents. We found that 73% of PAs experienced substantial deforestation pressure, with >0.1% a(-1) forest loss in the outer 1 km buffer. Forest loss within PAs was greatest in Asia (0.25% a(-1)) compared to Africa (0.1% a(-1)), the Neotropics (0.1% a(-1)) and Australasia (Australia and Papua New Guinea; 0.03% a(-1)). We defined performance (P) of a PA as the ratio of forest loss in the inner 1 km buffer compared to the loss that would have occurred in the absence of the PA, calculated as the loss in the outer 1 km buffer corrected for any difference in deforestation pressure between the two buffers. To remove the potential bias due to terrain, we analysed a subset of PAs (n = 1804) where slope and elevation in inner and outer 1 km buffers were similar (within 1° and 100 m, respectively). We found 41% of PAs in this subset reduced forest loss in the inner buffer by at least 25% compared to the expected inner buffer forest loss (P<0.75). Median performance (P) of subset reserves was 0.87, meaning a reduction in forest loss within the PA of 13%. We found PAs were most effective in Australasia (P = 0.16), moderately successful in the Neotropics (P = 0.72) and Africa (p = 0.83), but ineffective in Asia (P = 1). We found many countries have PAs that give little or no protection to forest loss, particularly in parts of Asia, west Africa and central America. Across the tropics, the median effectiveness of PAs at the national level improved with gross domestic product per capita. Whilst tropical and subtropical moist forest PAs do reduce forest loss, widely varying performance suggests substantial opportunities for improved protection, particularly in Asia.

Dataset Information

Unsustainable development pathways caused by tropical deforestation.

Publications

Unsustainable development pathways caused by tropical deforestation.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets