Avoided deforestation may be financed through a multilateral fund for climate change in the future. There is a concern that payments for REDD should benefit the poor, and that it is necessary to design incentives that make sustainable forestry more profitable than deforestation or degradation....

By assuming a forest growing logistically and a local population that harvests wood illegally in a manner similar to predation, a bio-economic model gives the following results: 1) when local population is very low, optimal deterring effort is zero; 2) as long as the population is sufficiently...