Pp. 3-29 in Ros-Tonen, M.A.F. and Dietz, T. (eds.) (2005) African Forests Between Nature and Livelihood Resources: Interdisciplinary Studies in Conservation and Forest Management. Lewiston NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. CHAPTER 1 Reconciling Conservation Goals and Livelihood Needs: New Forest Management Perspectives in the 21 st Century Mirjam A.F. Ros-Tonen, Fred Zaal and Ton Dietz 1 The State of the World’s Forests 2003, published by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO, 2003), paints a rather gloomy picture of the prospects of achieving sustainable forest management in Africa in the foreseeable future. Growing population numbers and large proportions of the rural population suffering from food insecurity and energy scarcity mean that more and more people are falling back on forest and wildlife resources in order to survive. At the same time, deforestation rates are increasing rapidly due to the transformation of forest into farmland (for both commercial plantations and shifting cultivation), logging, fuelwood collection, heavy livestock grazing and increasing urbanisation and industrialisation (UNEP, 2000). Drought, civil wars and bush fires also contribute to forest degradation (ibid.), as well as the over-harvesting of non- timber forest products (NTFPs) and the bushmeat trade (UNEP, 2002). As a result, tropical forests in sub-Saharan Africa are rapidly shrinking. The FAO’s latest Global Forest Resources Assessment of 2000 estimates that Africa’s forest area had reduced from 700 million hectares in 1990 (23.5 per cent of the total 1 Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies (AMIDSt), Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: m.a.f.ros- tonen@uva.nl; a.f.m.zaal@uva.nl and a.j.dietz@uva.nl.