Nafanua: Saving the Samoan Rain Forest [Hardcover]

Paul Alan Cox (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0716731169 | ISBN-13: 978-0716731160 | Publication Date: November 1997

Nafanua is the author's account of the year he spent in a remote Samoan village researching medicinal plants. An eminent ethnobotanist, Cox succeeded in making some vital discoveries, including one that led to a drug now being tested for treatment of hepatitis and AIDS. He also launched an international campaign to save lowland rainforest from logging, and was honoured by village leaders with the title of the legendary Samoan goddess Nafanua. For his work in Samoa, Cox was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, considered to be the Nobel Prize for the Environment.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Cox (Botany/Brigham Young Univ.) details the tribulations of protecting a small patch of unique forest in this story of his field days in Western Samoa. Spurred by the recent death of his mother from breast cancer, Cox decided to pursue ethnobotanical studies in Samoa, hoping to find indigenous pharmaceutical possibilities for treating cancer in the endemic plant community and in the traditional healing techniques of Samoan herbalists. He headed for the most remote village he could find to interview healers on their use of local plant life and soon found himself swept into not only the everyday life of the village (it didn't hurt that he was fluent in both colloquial and formal Samoan, which he learned during an earlier stint in Mormon service on the island), but also as a dedicated conservationist involved in the effort to save the island's remaining rainforest and its denizens. He knew that as the rainforest went, so too would go any hopes of tapping the potential of its singular plant communities. Cox chronicles his efforts, along with those of numerous others, to end destructive logging, gain endangered status for such unusual forest species as the flying fox, and raise money to provide schools that the timber harvest would have paid for. While Cox can be irksomely disingenuous (``I was astonished Rothman had heard of my ongoing effort to protect flying foxes--I had published only a few articles in addition to giving several lectures on the topic,'' he rather modestly notes), one can only admire the devout conservation ethic, and the deep immersion in Samoan culture, of this broadly curious ethnobotanist. Cox complements his record of the harsh specifics involved in struggling to preserve native species and cultures with the exegetic delineation of subtly important moments in Samoan culture--the kava ceremony, for example--that have no analogue in Western society. A lively, useful work. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

Cox is indeed heroic, his story is extraordinary... -- Booklist, December 1, 1997

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 236 pages
• Publisher: W H Freeman & Co (November 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0716731169
• ISBN-13: 978-0716731160
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,740,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book!, January 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nafanua: Saving the Samoan Rain Forest (Hardcover)

This is a most interesting book, the stody of how the author came to live in Samoa,and fell in love with the people and their tropical forest environment. When faced with a seemingly hopeless situation, namely the destruction of a huge area of tropical forest, the author recounts his experience in helping to save these sacred lands--through purchasing the logging rights from the outsiders who were beginning to bulldoze the forests, and turning the control of the forests over to the local community. The book is filled with fascinating stories, and the people and their forests come alive in its pages. I was particularly moved by Cox's account of living through a typhoon and barely managing to save his family and Samoan friends as the waves continued to pound apart each of the shelters that they took refuge in. A wonderful narrative of live on this remote Pacific Island, of botanical studies, conservation and committment to a cause. Truely this book will be an inspiration for people who are looking for real life heroes--in this case the lineage of elderly healers who have been the guardians of their sacred traditions for thousands of years, who worked with Paul Cox to ensure that their plants, many with profoundly important uses, would be preserved for future generations. I gave this book to several friends. It is, quite simply, a wonderful read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important implications for conservation-with-development, June 13, 2002

By 

W. S. Kirkham (Turlock, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nafanua: Saving the Samoan Rain Forest (Paperback)

This unique and fascinating book by Dr. Cox has important implications for development practitioners and academics interested in political ecology as well as ethnobotanists. The challenges faced by the people of Falealupo village in choosing between preserving their forest or building a school for their children are typical of the environmental trade-offs that many people in developing countries feel compelled to make simply to achieve, by our standards, a minimally acceptable standard of living. The solution presented by Dr. Cox, in which social networks are built such that people willing to invest in the preservation of ecosystems are put into direct contact with those people overseeing these ecosystems (without government or NGO intervention) has important lessons for people interested in promoting "Conservation-with-Development" approaches to economic development. This text also illustrates the complex ways that the human imprint on ecosystems is embedded in power-laden social networks and that change involves contestation and negotiation of power within these networks. This book thus holds important insights for those interested in political ecology. (For those interested in these topics, Dr. Cox's contribution to People, Plants and Justice - Charles Zerner, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2000 - makes an informative companion-piece to Nafanua.)

Finally, as a person who has lived in Samoa for several years as a volunteer teacher and as someone who conducts ecological research there, I find Dr. Cox's presentation of the people of Samoa, shown from a more personalized perspective rather than an academic one, to be open, honest and fair. He avoids falling into the trap of romanticizing or essentializing the people as "ecologically noble savages" that live in perfect harmony with their environment that has become so common in depictions of indigenous peoples in the popular media. When I read the book, I often saw the Samoa that I knew from my own personal experience.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Married to a Hamo (Samoan), August 31, 2001

By 

Paul M. Leidig (Rosemount, Minnesota United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nafanua: Saving the Samoan Rain Forest (Paperback)

This was an outstanding work. I am a palagi who has been married to a Samoan woman for 9 years and have had extensive dealings with Samoans for 14 years. We visited Western Samoa in 1988, so I have seen the culture first-hand, as well as my state-side exposure with Samoan American organizations. I could almost see myself interacting with the people as he related his accounts... although my 50 or so word Samoan vocabulary can't be compared with the author. He truly captures the essence of Samoa and its people.