Unjust patterns of land use and ownership in the tropics have been exaggerated by the incorporation of the third world into the global market.

Self-sufficient economies have been turned into zones of agricultural production for export (cash crops). Secured power of wealthy land owners at the expense of third world farming systems creating instability, poverty and environmental degradation. Since the 1950's the World Bank and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) have played a key role in promoting this market-orientated agricultural model.

Fuel

Deforestation links with land management - land rights and land reform. In brazil, where 2% of the people control 60% of arable land, poor brazilians are to settle in the Amazon rainforests destroying the habitats and communities. Logging and cattle ranching also destroy rainforests. It is not population pressure but market demand by wealthier consumers - mainly industrialised countries that destroys the forest the living environment for many people.

The World Resource Institute says:
"one of the primary reasons pushing landless migrants into forests is the inequitable distribution of agricultural land.....land reform policies, therefore, are one of the most potent tools governments posses to stabilize forest use".

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