The tropical forests are vanishing faster than ever. At one international conference after another, politicals and planners wring their hands at the world's approaching doom. Deforestation, they tell us, is caused by 'poverty', 'over-population' and 'under-development'. The solutions are therefore obvious - fewer people and more development.This book challenged these assumptions. Deforestation, it argues, is an expression of structural inequalities within tropical countries in their relations with the industrial North. Throwing air money into the development pot will only accelerate forest loss if these structural issues are not simultaneously addressed.Based on six country studies from Latin America, Asia, and Africa to illustrate the real complexity of the problem and the diversity of situations that exist, this book shows how land concentration, land speculation and landlessness are the main causes of improvident land use. Poor people, denied land and livelihood are being forced into the forests in ever increasing numbers for sheer survival, often encouraged by government and development agency funding. Meanwhile the lands they have been forced to abandon are turned over to agribusiness producing cash crops for export.Agrarian reform must be moved to the top of the global agenda. Without land and food security, rural communities will become increasingly destabilises and impoverished and vulnerable ecosystems will be destroyed. Local people must be allowed to regain control over their land and their economies, and Third World debt cancelled, if the twin problems of poverty and environmental destruction are to be tackled.

Focuses on international commerce as the greatest threat to the world's rain forests. Argues that no single industry or activity is to blame for deforestation, but that the ways in which consumers around the world spend and invest comprises a web of interests that lead to the depletion of natural resources and the destruction of habitats. Advocates consumer behavior meant to curtail the destruction.

A 'regional' political economy which makes its own contribution to the theory of the state.

Compelling and comprehensive, Tree Huggers is the definitive history of the ongoing environmental struggle and invaluable reading for anyone who is concerned about the fate of the forest, the future of public land management, or the health of the conservation movement at the close of the 20th century.

Since its original publication by the International Institute for Environment and Development in 1999, Policy That Works for Forests and People has been recognised as the most authoritative study to date of policy processes that affect forests and people. Providing a thorough analysis of the issues, options and factors that determine different outcomes and bolstered by a major annex containing tools and tactics, the book offers clear and practical advice on how to formulate, manage and implement policies appropriate to different contexts. These are policies that result in real improvements in the governance, use and economic benefits that can flow from forests to those who depend upon them. This book is essential reading for policy-makers, forestry practitioners and academics and students in all areas of forest policy, management and governance.

In Forest Land by Douglas Malloch, first published in 1906, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.

A lively, engaging ethnography that demonstrates how a volatile politics of race, class, and nation animates the infamously violent struggles over forests in the U.S. Southwest.

A close associate of Chico Mendes, Gomercindo Rodrigues witnessed the struggle between Brazil's rubber tappers and local ranchers—a struggle that led to the murder of Mendes. Rodrigues's memoir of his years with Mendes has never before been translated into English from the Portuguese. Now, Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes makes this important work available to new audiences, capturing the events and trends that shaped the lives of both men and the fragile system of public security and justice within which they lived and worked. In a rare primary account of the celebrated labor organizer, Rodrigues chronicles Mendes's innovative proposals as the Amazon faced wholesale deforestation. As a labor unionist and an environmentalist, Mendes believed that rain forests could be preserved without ruining the lives of workers, and that destroying forests to make way for cattle pastures threatened humanity in the long run. Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes also brings to light the unexplained and uninvestigated events surrounding Mendes's murder. Although many historians have written about the plantation systems of nineteenth-century Brazil, few eyewitnesses have captured the rich rural history of the twentieth century with such an intricate knowledge of history and folklore as Rodrigues.

Liberation Ecologies elaborates a political-economic explanation of environmental crisis, drawing from the most recent advances in social theory.