Using GIS Techniques to Evaluate Community Sustainability in Open Forestlands in Sub-Saharan Africa

The sustainable development of humanity is inextricably linked with how well it manages its impacts on natural resources and the environment. For many people in developed countries this is an attractive concept but a rather abstract one, because:

• they are very remote from the sources of the natural resources on which they depend;

• they are just as content with human-made urban environments as with natural rural environments; and

• their societies contain many possible mechanisms to substitute for natural resources that become scarce.