Uses and conservation of plant diversity in Ben En National Park, Vietnam

This thesis concerns the interactions between plant diversity and plant uses by the local population in Ben En National Park, Vietnam. The study should be viewed against the background of global concerns about the current status and future sustainability of tropical forests. Tropical forests are characterized by very high plant diversity; covering less than 10% of the total land areas; they possess more than 50% of all known plant species on earth (Wilson 1988; Mayaux et al. 2005). The international Convention on Biological Diversity signed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 strongly emphasized the need for biodiversity conservation. From that global perspective, despite numerous efforts to conserve biodiversity, tropical forests have severely declined in the last 16 years and still continue to decline (Johnson 1993; Achard et al. 2002; Chien 2006; Butler & Laurance 2008; Putz et al. 2008). During the past decades, around 6 million ha of tropical forests have been lost (Achard et al. 2002). The main causes are agricultural expansion, over-harvesting of tropical hardwoods, development of plantations, mining operations, industry, urbanization, and road building (Geist & Lambin 2002; Chien 2006). Among tropical areas, South-East Asia has the highest relative rate of deforestation (Achard et al. 2002; Brook et al. 2006; Chien 2006). Tropical forests are important for global environmental ecosystem function (Fearnside 1997; Laurance 1999), they also provide subsistence needs and income for hundreds of millions of people worldwide (Iqbal 1993; Walter 2001), often the very poor (Ticktin 2004). A successful biodiversity conservation strategy requires a good understanding of the relationships among natural resources and social conditions. This is particularly important for tropical countries, where the forests are very rich in biodiversity, but are being lost at an alarming rate (Whitmore 1997; Sodhi et al. 2004; Chien 2006).