Elsevier

Land Use Policy

Volume 27, Issue 2, April 2010, Pages 98-107
Land Use Policy

The forest transition: Towards a more comprehensive theoretical framework

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.02.001Get rights and content

Abstract

Building on the contributions of Mather and others, this paper offers an approach for developing a more comprehensive theory of the forest transition. We argue that long-run changes in forest cover in a country or region cannot be separated from the overall pattern of land use changes. Moreover, this pattern is determined by relative land values; forest cover changes over time as the value of one land use relative to the value of its competing use changes over time. However, the actual values that are used to allocate land may be far from optimal; that is, the presence of market, policy and institutional failures can distort economic and political incentives that can lead to bias in favour of one type of land use over the other, and may ultimately explain why a forest transition may be delayed unnecessarily in some countries and regions.

Introduction

Alexander Mather's seminal contribution to the analysis of long-run land use change was to propose that a country's forest cover generally declines as it develops socially and economically, but eventually this trend could be reversed and forest cover may eventually expand. The result is an inverted “U-shaped curve” for forest cover as a function of time. The point at which forest decline halts and begins to rise, Mather called the forest transition (Mather, 1990, Mather, 1992). He documented its occurrence in various European countries (e.g., Mather et al., 1998, Mather et al., 1999, Mather and Fairbairn, 2000, Mather, 2004) and in his last paper, published posthumously, in three Asian countries (Mather, 2007).

Mather's concept of a forest transition has since led to various attempts to test empirically for the evidence of such a U-shaped curve (e.g., see Palo and Vanhanen, 2000, Kauppi et al., 2006, Rudel, 1998, Rudel et al., 2005). In addition, several theories have also been proposed as to why such a forest transition occurs during the course of long-run economic development, mostly focusing the various factors influencing processes of deforestation as opposed to reforestation (e.g., see Foster and Rosenzweig, 2003, Grainger, 1995a, Grainger, 2008, Mather, 1992, Mather, 2000, Mather and Needle, 1998, Perz, 2007, Perz and Skole, 2003, Rudel et al., 2005). Finally, Mather's focus on analysing long-run patterns in land use change, like that of Palo et al. (1987) and Grainger, 1995a, Grainger, 1995b, contrasted with contemporaneous attempts to identify the causes of deforestation by cross-sectional and panel regression analyses of rates of deforestation and socio-economic change both across and within countries (see Angelsen and Kaimowitz, 1999, Barbier and Burgess, 2001, Grainger, 1998, Lambin, 1994, Walker, 2004 for reviews). These two approaches characterized the early development of what is now called land change science (Rindfuss et al., 2004).

Mather's primary analytical approach relied on detailed historical description, supplemented by reference to processes. He employed regression tests where he felt these were warranted, but for him the evidence always came first. This approach contrasted with the more conceptual approach to land use change that was also being developed during this period, which Mather referred to as “an evolving body of forest transition theory” (Mather, 2004), and which he considered as still “rudimentary” (Mather, 2004) and “poorly developed” (Mather, 2007). Mather did, however, leave us interesting insights into the influence on the transition of democratic institutions (Mather and Needle, 1999b) and random forest clearance in countries with heterogeneous distributions of land capability (Mather and Needle, 1998).

Other social scientists have followed Mather in searching for evidence of forest transitions elsewhere in the world (e.g., Kauppi et al., 2006, Mustard et al., 2004, Palo and Vanhanen, 2000, Rudel, 1998, Rudel et al., 2000, Rudel et al., 2005), but they have largely emphasized description over theory. One exception is the recent application of a landowner decision-making model by Satake and Rudel (2007), although as the authors acknowledge economy-wide influences such as government policy, technological change and demographic factors are ignored at this level of analysis. Consequently, while the concept of a forest transition is valuable and provides a testable hypothesis, i.e. the trend in loss of national forest cover will eventually reverse its trajectory), it still lacks a comprehensive theoretical framework. This became all the more apparent when Mather and co-workers devised the forest identity concept, which extended the one-dimensional area transition to two dimensions by adding biomass (Kauppi et al., 2006).

Economists have not focussed on forest transitions per se, but have made many contributions to analyzing the factors causing agricultural land conversion and deforestation, especially in developing countries. Barbier and Burgess (2001) and Barbier (2005, Chap. 5) survey these studies and suggest that four distinct analytical frameworks motivate cross-country estimations of these factors: (a) the environmental “Kuznets” curve (EKC) hypothesis; (b) competing land-use models; (c) forest land conversion models; and (d) institutional models. Recent empirical estimates of tropical agricultural land expansion and deforestation have combined various aspects of these models to create “synthesis analyses” of certain economic, institutional and structural factors to capture country-by-country differences in agricultural and land use patterns (Barbier, 2004a, Barbier, 2004b, Barbier and Burgess, 2001, Bhattarai and Hammig, 2004, Walker, 2004). Although such studies have attempted to provide a theoretical framework for understanding and identifying the economic and social factors behind forest conversion, they have generally ignored the possible processes leading to forest recovery. As a result, some issues fundamental to forest transition theory and analysis have not been addressed. For example, there has been little or no research exploring at what point in economic development the transition in forest cover occurs; how long is the “trough” of forest depletion compared to the initial forest area, and how substantial and sustained is the ultimate rise in re-established forest.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a direction which could be taken in developing a more comprehensive theory of the forest transition.

First, we argue that long-run changes in forest cover in a country or region cannot be separated from the overall pattern of land use changes for that country or region. When we observe forest cover declining, it is because land in forest is being converted to another land use. Conversely, when afforestation, reforestation or natural regrowth occurs, it is because land under an alternative use is being replaced by more forest land.

Second, although there may be different land uses that are alternatives to forest land – such as agriculture, urban development, residential housing and so forth – and forest land itself may have different uses – for timber production, recreation, nature reserves and so forth – what ultimately determines the use of the land is its value compared to the value of all competing uses.

The third contribution of this paper is to assert that the forest transition theory should be broadened to a theory of land use allocation, and that it is the value of land under competing uses that determines ultimately whether the resulting pattern of land use leads to an increase or decrease in forest cover. In other words, forest cover changes over time as the value of one land use relative to the value of its competing use changes over time.

Fourth, we emphasize that the actual values that are used to allocate land may be far from optimal. That is, the presence of market, policy and institutional failures, as well as long-run changes in the structure, technology and institutions of an economy, can distort incentives and lead to bias in favour of one type of land use over the other. Such distortions cannot only mean inefficient use of the land and wasted opportunities for economic development but also explain why a forest transition may be delayed unnecessarily in some countries and regions. Mather was well aware of this influence of institutions, incentives and values on long-run forest land use. He remarked how the relationship between forest change and population change could “flip” over time (Mather et al., 1998). He also suggested that positive forest trends are more likely in countries with democratic political institutions, and provided some statistical evidence for this (Mather and Needle, 1999a, Mather and Needle, 1999b). Thus, the developments in the theory of forest transition we are suggesting in this paper are very much consistent with the seminal contributions by Mather to the development of long-run land use change analysis.

Section snippets

Forest transition and land use change

Studying forest change in the context of the evolution of the overall pattern of land use for a country is not a new idea. Early in the development of the theory of the forest transition, Grainger (1995b) suggested that the long-term trend in a country's forest cover is best viewed in terms of changes in its national land use morphology. Grainger (1995a) further suggested that the U-shaped forest cover curve is actually the aggregate of two separate land use change curves: the decline in forest

Competing land uses and values

The fundamental question that any theory of the forest transition and national land use change must answer is: what drive these changes in land use, from one competing use to another? In our view, the key factor is changes in land values over time. Economists have employed this competing land use value perspective to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing one of the “land use transitions” described above, the loss of forest in tropical countries as the result of conversion to agriculture

Markets, policies and institutions

Because changes in the value of competing land uses drive the different phases of forest decline and recovery association with the forest transition, there is great scope for policy to influence these processes. As we have already discussed, and shown in Fig. 2A, the long period of forest decline that is associated with conversion of primary forest to agricultural land is influenced considerably by the failure to take into account the environmental values lost when the forests are converted.

Final remarks

In this paper we have argued that further theoretical development of the forest transition concept originated by Alexander Mather should take into account three principles. First, any analysis of a possible forest transition in a country or region cannot be separated from the overall pattern of competing land use changes occurring in that country or region, and how that relates to its land capability distribution. Second, what ultimately determines whether a particular land use pattern leads to

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers and the encouragement of Tom Rudel.

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    Paper prepared for the Special Issue of Land Use Policy in memory of Alexander S. Mather.

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