To encourage this shift, they issued a raft of incentives for forest conservation, such as tax breaks for non-timber forest products like rubber, palm hearts and nuts.

ECONOMIST: A lesson for others

Some take two or three hundred years to fully mature - and no timber licence lasts that long - so the diversity of the forest is being eroded.

BBC: Roger Harrabin reports from Cameroon

In the winter he fed his stock on hay cut and dried on the mountainside, and for a little extra income, he cut timber from the forest and floated it downriver - just as the Krivecs of Perk Farm do today.

BBC: Snowbound Slovenia

The same problem haunts the main forest-related certification scheme, for timber.

ECONOMIST: Western consciences can do only so much to conserve forests

Hoping to recoup some of the timber and toss much-needed work to sawmills, the Forest Service proposed to sell 370 million board feet of lumber from dead trees and replant 30, 000 acres.

FORBES: Hug a Dead Tree Today

Meghalaya's enormous forest cover is community-owned, but timber merchants often bypass the local leaders to strike up deals with foresters.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | A Royal Tribe Under Threat

Sino-Forest tumbled in June after Carson Block, a short seller, said the company exaggerated its timber holdings.

FORBES: Sino-Forest Eyes 'All Options' For Shareholders, But Doubts Persist