The five papers comprising the symposium on trade, renewable resources and biodiversity are good illustrations of a growing literature in this area that show how the design of appropriate policies must take into account complex interactions between ecological, economic and institutional factors....

Empirical evidence indicates that in many developing regions, the extreme poor in more marginal land areas form a "residual" pool of rural labor. Structural transformation in such developing economies depends crucially on labor and land use decisions of these most-vulnerable populations located...