| Abstract: |
Forest transition theory was primarily developed
to explain the process of decline (deforestation)
and recovery (regeneration) of forest area in both
temperate and tropical areas. Most forest transition
theory literature use national statistics on forest
cover, which refer to a diverse range of tree cover
types. As qualitative change between tree cover
types is a prominent aspect of the regeneration
process, the term ‘tree cover transition’ may be a
more appropriate and useful identification.
It seems that ‘trees’ were relegated when the
world moved its focus to ‘forests’ as part of the
climate debate. The term ‘forest’ is first of all an
institutional marker; there are forests without
trees and trees outside forests. Moreover, debates
about forest transition have often tried to replace
time as the primary X-axis with macroeconomic
variables that indicate the changing roles of
forest areas once economies develop. However,
in the context of tropical countries, the existing
hypotheses lack agency- and context-specific
explanations. While the logarithm of human
population density accounts for 70-80% of
variation in the national forest cover fraction,
forest transition points can occur at almost any
population density and forest cover fraction
(Figure 1). They seem to be more likely, however,
in countries that already had above-average forest
cover in relation to their population density. The
identified limitations of forest transition theory
include the loose definition of forests (combining
primary, secondary and planted forest types),
a lack of detail about the forest cover dynamics
involved, including its spatial and (multi-)temporal
scales, and few explanations of context-specific
transitions (Perz, 2008). |
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