Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America [Paperback]

J. Timmons Roberts (Author), Nikki Demetria Thanos (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415929806 | ISBN-13: 978-0415929806 | Publication Date: June 25, 2003 | Edition: 1

Environmental degradation in Latin America has become one of the most pressing issues on the international agenda. The volume began to crescendo when space shuttle astronauts photographed five thousand fires on a single night in the Brazilian Amazon state of Rondonia in 1985, and grew shrill when rubbertapper Chico Mendes was shot in 1988 trying to stop ranchers from clearing rainforests near his home in Acre. Since the early 80s, we've heard pleas from rock star, environmental groups, and scientists, asking us to focus our attention on environmental destruction in Latin America-oil spills, lax NAFTA driven ecological standards, endangered indigenous cultures, and the destruction of the rainforests. This volume presents an overview of the pressing nature of these issues and the scope of the problems and seeks to focus our attention on environmental destruction in Latin America by examining several types of environmental crises in Latin American countries. With discussions of the World Bank, urban pollution, NAFTA, toxic pollution in maquiladoras, headline grabbing environmental disasters, drug trafficking, and the 1992 Rio Earth Conference, this book will be a must read for anyone interested in the future of Latin America or world ecology.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Fast-paced, complex, challenging and important. Their analysis of the broad scale of loss and biological decline occurring in the Amazon basin, and the factors driving it, are as stunning as any I've read..
–David Helvarg, from the Foreword

Presents vignettes detailing the real stories people dealing with an acute environmental problem; describes the current extent and depth of the problem (and) explores the historical roots of the problem, viewed broadly..
–Journal of Economic Literature, December 2003

About the Author

J. Timmons Roberts is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Mellon Program in Environmental Science and Policy at the College of William and Mary. He is author of Chronicles from the Environmental Justice Frontline, and From Modernization to Globalization.
Nikki Demetria Thanos works in MDexico as a Popular Educator and Political Analyst for Witness For Peace, a US-based non-profit organization. She studied environmental policy and Latin American studies at Tulane University, and has conducted research in Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, MDexico and the Andes.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (June 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415929806
• ISBN-13: 978-0415929806
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #382,139 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Readable, comprehensive, and thought-provoking analysis, September 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America (Paperback)

This is the book we have all been waiting for: a definitive analysis on the state of the environment in Latin America, how it got that way, and --- best of all-- what is and can be done to remedy the crises. Trouble in Paradise offers the coherence, comprehensiveness,and depth sorely lacking in environmental studies about Latin America. Informed by long-term academic as well as political engagement with these issues, Roberts and Thanos make a varied set of long-term environmetal crises and struggles surrounding them come to life for both students and specialists. They trace how common political, economic and social features structure these case studies and thus bring Latin America's environment to the forefront of discussions about globalization.

Its readability, price, length (200 pages of reading) and content make this volume excellent for both undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It will get students excited about both Latin America as well as environmental struggles and the inequalities that surround them. The case studies they cover are great jumping off points for imporant related issues such as free trade, inequality, ethnicity, social movements, urbanization and local politics. I will be using it at my desk and in the classroom for years to come!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitive, enlightening and beautifully written, September 19, 2004

By 

L. Stoller (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America (Paperback)

I've been in business, been involved with ecology and cultural survival and I've traveled in and among the countries and cultures of Latin America for over 25 years. I read this book on a recent trip to Costa Rica and I am so impressed with it that I am purchasing 25 copies and sending them to all of the managers of my mutual funds. How this action fits in with a review on a book concerning the plant's ecology may not be clear to you, but if you read some of the other descriptions of "Trouble in Paradise", then you may understand. For people concerned with the future and with the environment this book provides tremendous relief.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended!, April 10, 2004

By 

Ron Mader "Planeta.com Founder" (Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America (Paperback)

(From Planeta Journal) -- A must read for anyone interested in environmental issues and must read for anyone interested in Latin America, Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America (Routledge, 2003) combines academic research with a regional travelogue.

Written by J. Timmons Roberts and Nikki Demetria Thanos, this book reviews the critical issues run the gamut from green to gray.

Chapters review pollution havens on the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, the hazards of an urban sprawl and the rise of protests particularly via the Internet. This is no surprise as co-author J. Timmons Roberts is a co-founder of the Environment and Latin America Network (ELAN).

Excerpts from Trouble in Paradise

To become sustainable, Latin America needs real democracy to create the leverage for its citizens to demand a cleaner environment and the services they need to survive. (p. 4)

Contact informs strategic advocacy work on one or both sides of the North-South divide. Lives can be changed. The same can be said of academic programs in the region and of linkages between universities and other schools ... Rather than merely observing these issues from afar and wringing our hands, we need to be engaged. Institutions can be changed. (pp. 205-206)

Study and travel in Latin America and connections between communities and universities across the North-South divide can create lasting bonds and new directions of change. And we need to call for a drastic rethinking of priorities in international aid and finance. Aid needs to support solutions which address social and environmental problems at the same time. (pp. 210-211)