Abstract:
While many studies analyse patterns of tropical land management with a
backward-oriented approach that utilises data of the past, we propose to consider
future-oriented modelling approaches to find sustainable land-use options. This
proposal is illustrated with application examples for advanced growth modelling in
tropical forests, a short overview on financial performance analyses for tropical land
uses, and the introduction of a newmodelling approach. Thismodelling approach sees
tropical land management as a financial portfolio of land-use options. Its advantage is
the ability to make transparent effects of financial risk reduction that arise from
mixing forestry and agriculture-based land-use options. The approach thus does not
analyse land uses as stand-alone options, like most other analyses do. The land-use
portfolio modelling shows that sustainable land use may also be financially attractive
for farmers, if abandoned farm lands are reforested (with a native tree species in our
case) and sustainable management in natural forests is carried out. We conclude that
the combination of advanced growth with sound financial modelling may lead to
improved bioeconomic models. Developed bioeconomic models are necessary to
increase the biological realism and acceptability of the results obtained.
