 All right, let's get some more analysis on this the director general at the Center for International Forestry Research Robert Nassi joins me now from Bogorra Indonesia. Robert, good to have you on the show You know in Melinda's package. She was mentioning some of the effects of deforestation I'd like to talk to you about some of the causes because it could be often overlooked I mean, what do you think are the prime causes for deforestation? Depends where you are if you're in the tropics the prime cause for deforestation Agriculture and large-scale agriculture in Latin America for example small-scale agriculture in in Africa 80% of the tropical forests that have been deforested is because of agriculture But then you have a mining infrastructure and sort of fundamentally all the thing that that we have done in developed country in that Resulted in less forest The main cause as it is now in the tropical forest is agriculture main cause in the boreal forest is more climate change and forest fire Okay, you said it all depends on where we are. I believe that we have gone through periods of heavy deforestation in the past I was reading a National Geographic article which stated basically that from the early 1600s to late 1800s about half of the forests in North America had been sort of brought down How does that differ to what we're seeing today? Yeah, you are correct. I mean, we have had this transition from very forested country to much less forest and we had that in Europe during the industrial revolution in the US The difference is that at that time there was something like half a billion people living on earth and there were still a lot of tropical forests untouched The lots of boreal forests untouched What is happening now is we are next to eight billion and there is very little untouched So that there is no more large or very little amount of rainforest left There is very little amount of primary temperate forest left So we are seeing the same phenomenon that we saw something like four or five hundred years ago But with a population that is almost ten order of magnitude bigger and very little untouched place in the world So we need to keep the primary forest we are left because if they disappear, I mean, they will never reappear And how do you do that? Well, that's a difficult question because if someone had the right answer, maybe the deforestation will stop But I think it's a mix of various policy interventions I mean, first, you have to remove any perverse incentive that makes profitable to cut forest You need to provide a incentive for people to keep forests because if there is no other choice People will cut the forest to plant their cassava because they need that to eat So it's a mix of removing the perverse incentive that exists in terms of agriculture, extensive livestock or commodities And giving an incentive for the local population for them to keep their forests And for that you need to give them the right to their forest, the right to their product, the right to say something So that decisions are not taken by only central government that have not a direct stake on what is happening to the forest I understand all that, but you know, when the world's population is eight billion And when there's an increased demand for biofuels and lumber and timber And this perceived value that cut down forest is actually more valuable It's not an easy task No, and it's true that if you look at the economic value of an oil palm plantation compared to an economic value of a standing forest If you look only at the financial element, I mean sort of the oil palm is much more valuable But if you look at all the externalities or all the ecosystem services provided by the forest, climate, water, carbon storage Then suddenly the amount is not the same The problem is that the people that are benefiting from the global ecosystem services are not necessarily the people cutting the forest And benefiting from the immediate financial return of cutting the forest Alright, Robert Nassi live for us from Indonesia, thank you very much for coming on, I do appreciate your analysis Thank you very much