Sustainable development and management of forests

Abstract

The world's population, now eight times what it was at the beginning of the last century, has more than tripled in this century alone. Even greater is the increase in scale and intensity of human activity. All these developments have damaged and deteriorated the ecological systems and natural resources. There is an urgent need of bequeathing a healthy environment to future generation. This requires amongst others the management of forests on a sustainable basis. Forest sustainability depends upon how people define the forest they want, the area and time period over which they assess the balance between gains and losses in forest conditions, the means they employ, and for and by whom these means should be employed. Sustainability becomes an issue when disparities arise between what the forest people want and what actually prevails.