UC Davis economist Stephen Vosti and his collaborators have received an international science award for their efforts to save tropical rain forests and reduce poverty by addressing the economic and social needs of rain-forest farmers.

The Science Award for Outstanding Partnership 2005, given by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), went to the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Program for developing more environment-friendly farming and forest-management techniques, and slowing deforestation.

The alternatives program, headquartered at the Kenya-based World Agroforestry Centre, is a global partnership of more than 80 institutions, conducting research in 12 tropical forest biomes (biologically diverse areas) in the Amazon, Congo basin, northern Thailand, and the islands of Mindanao in the Philippines and Sumatra in Indonesia. Its efforts are directed toward curbing deforestation and reducing poverty among those living near or within tropical moist forests.

Late last year, Vosti prepared several chapters for and co-edited a book on the program's first decade of research, "Slash-and-Burn Agriculture: The Search for Alternatives," which details the causes and consequences of the annual destruction of 80,000 square miles of rain forest, and provides technology, policy and institutional options for reducing forest loss.

Vosti is associate director of the Center for Natural Resources Policy Analysis at UC Davis and an adjunct professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

One of his co-recipients of the CGIAR Science Award, Thomas Tomich, will speak on campus Thursday (Feb. 16). Tomich is global coordinator of the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Program and is at UC Davis this week as a candidate for director of the new UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute, in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Tomich's seminar will take place in Memorial Union II at 4:10 p.m.