Customer Reviews

Contested Nature: Promoting International Biodiversity and Social Justice in the Twenty-First Century

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This book came to my attention and interest after reading John Terbough's fine book "Requiem for Nature". I was interested in a book that offered solutions and insights into the problems of biodiversity protection that Terbough had described in his book.

Enough time has passed from some of the early efforts in protection of nature reserves in the tropics that an assessment of success can be made and an analysis of problems. This book was exactly what I was looking for as it makes the holistic assessment and analysis of parks and reserves. What has often been omitted in efforts to preserve biodiversity is a strategy to work with the local population that has lived in or near the parks and have made their living with the parks resources. All to often in the past these people have been forcibly removed and have justifiably become adversaries of parks and conservation. Foreign conservation organizations and national governments have made mistakes in destroying locally successful conservation strategies due to a lack of a sociological perspective and review.

The four editors of the book have looked at this as a sociological problem and have collected the essays and studies together for this book.
They mention that "The most likely alternative to socially just conservation is increasing levels of resistance and conflict at all geographic scales, a situation that can derail attempts at nature protection."

Six key concepts in socially just conservation and political processes to enhance nature protection are explored in this work including: 1. Human Dignity-Establishing a Strong Moral Foundation for Social Process. 2. Legitimacy-Constructing Authority. 3. Governance-Establishing Modes of Decision Making and Power Sharing. 4. Accountability-Guaranteeing Responsibility and Performance. 5. Adaptation and Learning-Institutionalizing Reflection and Self-Correction. 6. Non-local Forces-Analysis of the influence of National,International firms and their relationships to State and National elites in decision making.

With my education in biology and health care and its perspective parts of the book seemed a bit arcane, especially the third chapter by Peter Wilshusen on "Exploring the Political Contours of Conservation". The Section including "Critical Social Theory and the Dual Nature of Structure" was a very abstract academic perspective on the role of power players in park organization, establishment, and regulation that I personally found difficult to comprehend. The majority of the book is set with more concrete examples of the social problems of illegal residents, poverty, ecotourism, local and regional control issues that have been studied in Asia, Africa, South America and the Caribbean. This is the heart of the compilation and each site study is rich with unique solutions that are found and accomplished only during work in the field with the people that have the most to gain or lose and are the key in conserving tropical nature reserves.

Anyone well versed in Sociology or Political Science would not have difficulty with this book in its academic format and all that are interested in the success of biodiversity protection should read this and benefit from its important lessons and insights.