ABSTRACT
The conservation and sustainable management of forests became a politically important environmental issue in the mid-1980s when international concern over deforestation led to the first tentative international initiatives to tackle the problem. This chapter begins by explaining deforestation as an international political issue using public goods theory. It then presents an analytical overview of international forest politics, beginning with the forest negotiations that took place at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio, before tracking the aftermath of the Rio process, which has seen the establishment of a series of international forest bodies within the United Nations (UN) system. These bodies have agreed several non-legally binding outputs but, and despite several attempts, there is still no consensus that a global forests convention should be negotiated.
