A shift from poverty-driven to industry-driven deforestation threatens the world's tropical forests but offers new opportunities for conservation, according to an article coauthored by William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

"Rather than being dominated by rural farmers, tropical deforestation is increasingly driven by major industries—especially large-scale farming, mining, and logging," said Laurance. "Although this trend is pretty scary, it's also much easier to target a handful of global corporations than many millions of poor farmers."

Biofuels partly to blame

The United Nations estimates that some 13 million hectares (33 million acres) of tropical forest are destroyed each year; but these numbers mask a transition from mostly subsistence-driven to mostly corporate-driven forest destruction, say Butler and Laurance.

According to the authors, a global financial market and a worldwide commodity boom are creating conditions ripe for corporate exploitation of the environment. Surging demand for grain, driven by the thirst for biofuels and rising standards of living in developing countries, is also fueling this trend.

Source and more information: "New Strategies for Conserving Tropical Forests" will be featured in the September issue of the leading journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.