“Forestry programs in tropical countries.”

Despite my obvious lack of specialist qualifications, I have been invited to discuss the excellent papers of Robert Evenson and.Hans Gregersen which preceded this. Neither am I a forester, an ecologist nor an economist; nor, as will be seen, am I altogether sure what constitutes a forest. Accordingly I approach these two papers and the broader topic of tropical forestry as a layman, and will consider these subjects as a social and cultural anthropologist, as a native of the tropical regions whose forestry assets and policies are under discussion, and finally as someone familiar with some of the problems and processes of policy formation within Third
World governments. Accordingly the following comments are offered from a purely personal perspective, though I hope they may represent one possible Third World point of view.