Major drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries and REDD+

Identifying major drivers of deforestation and forest degradation has been an important task at the present context of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation 'REDD+'. At present, many bilateral and multilateral projects are carrying out pilot activities for the REDD+ in developing countries and many Asian countries are being engaged in this process. Asian countries namely Nepal, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR are also in the process and have initiated some preparedness activities, where annual loss of forest covers was found different in the period of 1990 to 2010. This loss was due to several drivers which are not understood well but it is important for designing the REDD+ projects. This paper aims to identify major drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in these countries. This study identified that conversion of forest land into agriculture land, illegal harvesting, infrastructure development, forest fires, encroachment, grazing etc are major causes in the region. These drivers are associated with various underlying factors mainly socioeconomic, and policy governance and the magnitudes of drivers are different in each country. These should be addressed with government intervention to change dependency on the forest resources, income sources of the people and institutional set up of the forestry sector