In the areas where often impoverished indigenous communities have been allowed to own the land they live on, they have invested 1.2 billion to 2.6 billion dollars a year in forest management and conservation, a study by the US group Forest Trends said.

"These often very poor communities are making the same levels of investment, at a minimum, perhaps a lot more, in conserving these areas, as developing country governments," said Stewart Maginnis of the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Their investment is also more than twice the amount of overseas development assistance devoted to protecting tropical forests, according to the study.

The local communities are also trading timber or finished wood products to earn a livelihood, ploughing some of the money back into essential education or health services that help them out of poverty.

"We were allowed by the government to commercialise timber in 1995, and we make furniture for sale in the country," Hildebrando Ruffner-Sebastian, an advisor with the Yanesha communities in Peru, told journalists.

An estimated 500 million people live in tropical forest areas worldwide, about half of them indigenous communities.

Because of the trend in many countries in the 1990s to decentralise authority, conservationists estimate that the amount of rainforest effectively controlled by local communities has doubled in 15 years to 370 million hectares.

That is equivalent to about 20 percent of the total and more than the officially protected forest area.

The International Tropical Timber Agreement, first set up in 1983 in response to a global outcry over deforestation, is due to be reviewed for the second time at the UN-led meeting of 59 countries in Geneva until Friday.

The commodities deal regulates the sustainable exploitation of tropical hardwoods such as mahogany, and is managed by an unusual blend of governments, the timber industry and conservationists.

"We do feel our voice is being listened to," Maginnis told AFP after informal discussions with industry representatives about illegal logging.

The official tropical timber trade has fallen from 13 billion dollars in 1990 to about eight billion dollars at the moment, according to Forest Trends.

Yet it says deforestation is still continuing unabated, probably due to illegal logging, and the agreement is chronically underfunded.

"The tropical forests are still in serious jeopardy. The deforestation rate is approximately 12 to 15 million hectares a year. It is continuing at a pace that is unprecedented," said Arvin Khare of Forest Trends.

Khare said the agreement should take into account the changing pattern of control over tropical forests and integrate property rights into it.

However, the issue is fraught with legal complications or controversy about wider issues of land rights for indigenous communities in parts of Asia, North and South America, and also raises objections from logging concession holders.

Maginnis said the study also represented a shift for many environmentalists, who were often bent on protecting rainforests and ruling out logging.

That had bred a "uneasy relationship" with local communities who have little else than timber to rely on for a living.

"The livelihoods of the rural poor and the conservation of biological diversity are so intricately intertwined, they are better addressed together," Maginnis said.

TERRA.WIRE