Sustainability of tropical land use systems following forest conversion

Farmer decision making involves the weighing of many options, includ-ing those off farm and off site, and includes the possibility of migrating elsewhere. Of particular interest to natural resource management research is the balance between decisions for activities in the rural landscape that invest, plant, care, and conserve and those that exploit, harvest, and market the resources. When exploitation and harvesting dominate, the resources are likely to degrade, but the returns to labor and short-term profitability may be high. When conservation, planting and other types of investment dominate, the resources may recover from past exploitation but may not meet current livelihood demands. Finding a balance between these aspects within the land-scape depends very much on the interactions between actors and stakehold-ers. Sustainability issues will play a role in farmersâ?? decisions only if they are made aware of the problems and have other options.Where a secure system of land tenure exists, the precept that â??a man should always aim to hand over his farm to his son in at least as good a condi-tion as he inherited it from his fatherâ? (Russell 1977) has been a major factor in promoting sustainable land management. Although the details may vary in different parts of the world (daughters may inherit farms, from either their mother or their father), the message remains clear: We have borrowed the resources from future generations and are supposed to return them intact

D.K Hairiah, 'Sustainability of tropical land use systems following forest conversion', Towards integrated natural resource management in forest margins of the humid tropics: local action and global concerns, p.27, 2001