(up to the 1990s) increase in wood extraction from forests. The revenue from timber was an important source of cen­tral government revenue in a number of countries, like the Philippines and Indonesia. This revenue was largely used for accumulation and infrastructure development outside of the forest areas themselves. The indigenous peoples who lived in and around these forests were marginal in the political equa­tions of these countries. Consequently, forest revenue was not reinvested within the forest-based communities them­selves, but outside for national interests. Extraction did not take account of sustainability considerations. Clear-felling resulted in the destruction of trees that were not the object of extraction and thus increased the extent of deforestation.
     The extraction of timber was later followed by the trans­formation of forests into plantations, the best example being palm oil plantations in Malaysia and more recently in Indo­nesia. This has, however, had implications for biodiversity and the ecological services that forests supply. Along with this, there was the development of tissue culture in order to propagate trees on a large scale.
     The one country in which wood extraction was linked to local ownership of the forests is China. After the late-1970s reform, large areas of forest were handed over to either local collective ownership (i.e., village-based) or household own­ership under the household responsibility system. Of course, under neither system of collective or household ownership did the owners have the right to sell or mortgage the forests, i.e., they had the right to manage the forest and the right to the income from it, but could not dispose of the forest. This truncated property right meant that forests could not become real estate, subject to speculation as, for example, urban land is.
     The result of this property reform was that the imme­diate owners had an interest in sustainably harvesting the timber from the forests. This has led to China playing a leading role in the development of plantation forests, i.e., a subset of planted forests consisting primarily of introduced species. Thus the technology change, from extraction from natural forests to the planting of forests for extraction, came about not just through the increased demand made by eco­nomic growth and trade but also by the change in property or institutional system. Had there been merely a change in availability due to depletion of natural forests, as has oc­curred in most other countries, there would have been just a shift in the origin of supply of timber to other countries that still had available forests. There need not have been a shift to plantation forests, as has not happened in India.
     The shift of supply, however, is also one of the responses of the Chinese and Indian markets. Both countries have instituted some forms of "logging bans" in the aftermath of devastating floods in the late 1990s and have shifted to importing timber to meet local demand. The difference be­tween the two is that, as pointed out above, in China there has been a growth of plantation forests and in India there has not been such a change.
     Further, with the ownership of the forests in the hands of the state, the external diseconomies that are borne by forest-dwellers are not part of the relevant cost economies. This problem can be taken care of by the above-mentioned institutional change whereby property rights are allotted to the forest-dwellers.

     There is yet another problem of costs that is related to technology change. As mentioned, the costs of extraction are the relevant costs so long as extraction is the method of production, if it can be called that. But such extraction, in the face of growing external demand and the attempts of the producers to maximize their own incomes, leads to the depletion of the resource, certainly where the resources are extracted in an open access property situation. This has been frequently observed in the case of medicinal plants and herbs. There is often a sudden increase in demand, as the modern pharmaceutical industry discovers ways of utiliz­ing indigenous knowledge to develop new kinds of drugs and medicines. This then leads to an increase in demand for the raw material, which the forest dwellers also col­lect in the largest possible quantities in order to maximize their own incomes and a consequent rapid depletion of the resource.
     The way out of this situation has often been the do­mestication and thus planting of the required plant mate­rial. This then means a shift in production from collection to growth or culture of the plant material. This technology shift is necessary to be able to provide supply in a sustain­able manner. This has occurred in numerous Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP). A change in technology enables a shift to sustainable production for the market. Deforesta­tion continues at an alarmingly high rate, but that the net loss of forest area is slowing down thanks to forest planting, landscape restoration and natural expansion of forests on abandoned land (Steinfeld, 2006).
     Forests are increasingly being conserved and managed for multiple uses and values and they play a crucial role in climate change mitigation and in the conservation of bio­diversity and of soil and water resources. If managed sus­tainably, forests also contribute significantly to local and national economies and to the well-being of current and future generations.
     While Asia reported a decrease in wood removals in re­cent years, Africa reported a steady increase. It is estimated that nearly half of the removed wood was fuelwood. The question of fuel use, specifically that of use of wood for fuel, is usually seen in energy models as a function of house­hold income. This is incorrect. Sample studies have shown that in many areas the proportion of wood as fuel does not go down with income in rural areas (Nathan and Kelkar, 1997). This is so when fuel is not purchased on the market, but is collected with household labor. This household labor is basically that of women and it has a low opportunity cost, i.e., its possible alternate uses yields very low income. It is this low-cost or even non-costed women's labor that is the cost to the household. As a result, unless income earning op­portunities for women increase and their opportunity cost goes up, there is not much saving of women's labor in such activities.
     In order to bring about the desired energy transition, i.e., away from wood to other commercial fuels, what is crucial is the increase in the income earning opportunities for women. This, for instance, has happened on a large-scale in China where women are part of what is called the labor force, participate in income earning activities. As against this, in India, the participation of women in the labor force is much lower in many parts, even higher income areas, but