Constraints to Tropical Forest Conservation and Successful Monitoring and Assessment of Land Uses Cover and Change: Do the Forest Definition and Administration Really Matter?

We examine the constraints to conservation and to successful forestlands’ monitoring/assessments in central Togo through GIS spatial analyses and through a critical overview of the current forestry administration’s model. The major findings are that the land classification based on few inventory parameters cannot substitute for “what forest is”, rather these inventory parameters constitute a mean to sound forest management and conservation when relevantly decided. Also as these parameters measured from satellite imagery are supplemented by continuous fine management data they may consistently contribute to the classification of the vegetation cover. This helps to suggest that solution to forest degradation/deforestation, and monitoring/ assessment requires data refinement through local forest management. Else, the actual forestry administration is local communities and indigenous people’s needs biased because it has been negligent of the cultural forestry practices, the major constraints to conservation and the monitoring/assessment of forest lands. As a common pool-resource, the questions relative to forest cannot be addressed at a single environmental concerns level. Interests are multiple and various along the spectrum from the global environment level to the local environmental level that should be accounted for. Thus we recommend a reconsideration of the forestry administration model. What is required are simple policies processes to define forest management plans that promote simultaneously sustainable forest management while accounting for any stakeholder concern, importantly the cultural forestry that addresses specific local communities and indigenous people’s forest related interests.

Linear Panel Data and Farming Cash Flow Analyses to Assess the Causes of Deforestation in the Upper Guinean Forest: Data and Evidence from the Prefectures of the Central Region in Togo

We present a careful quantitative description of land use in central Togo, by constructing farm budgets and analyzing time series data on agricultural production in four prefectures over the time period from 1996 to 2015. One key finding is that higher prices for chemical inputs are associated with more deforestation (as proxied by area in yam production), and correspondingly, greater quantities of chemical inputs applied are associated with less deforestation. This confirms that chemical fertilizers and forest clearing are substitutes and suggests that one path to reducing deforestation is to increase agricultural productivity, and to provide farmer with agricultural risk assistance that covers the farming negative externality costs. This risk assistance may include the coverage for the environmental deterioration costs, and the subsidies to compensate for investments’ cost.