DEFORESTATION in the Brazilian Amazon since the 1970s is lower than estimated, but its effect on biological diversity is greater. Estimates of deforestation ranged as high as 50,000 square kilometres

The World Bank continues to finance a development project in northwest Brazil, despite warnings that it would adversely affect the Uru Eu Wau Wau Indians.

Though the world's attention is focussed on the degradation of tropical forests as a major contributor to global warming, the depletion of boreal forests may also be playing a role.

By asserting the sovereignty of the right to control their tropical forests, more than 40 developing countries are gearing up to counter the North's attempts to regulate deforestation

The Delhi Declaration on forest management, conservation and sustainable development, adopted at the first ministerial conference of the forestry forum of developing countries, calls upon the international community to:

Various international fora and mechanisms have been formed to check deforestation, but tropical forest countries have always been wary of them, fearing interference by the North

For centuries, the Iban tribals of Malaysia have cultivated crops by clearing trees, but without endangering the rainforests. At the centre of their practices are traditional rights that each generation inherits.

Governments and loggers unhesitatingly blame tribals for the destruction of rainforests, but studies show otherwise.

At a recently held conference on tropical timber, producer nations demanded temperate forests be included in any agreement on international timber trade.

THE BRAZILIAN government swung into action recently to evict thousands of gold-panners from a 94,000- sq-kin Yanomami reserve near the Venezuelan border to save the 9,000 members of South