This book intends to examine the increased role of globally organized management institutions, knowledge systems, monitoring and coordinated strategies aimed at issues of resources, energy and conservation. As an edited volume, it covers a wide range of topics, including certification of agriculture in southern Mexico, satellite remote sensing for management and monitoring of certified forestry in the Brazilian Amazon, representation of bee-keeping in the Brazilian Amazon, the role of urban house-lot gardens and agro-diversity linking urban and rural habitats in Santarém, Brazil, multi-level geographies of seed networks in the Andean countries, the politics of conservation science and development in the Sahel, conservation initiatives and transnationalization in the Mekong River Basin, a transnational perspective on national protected areas and ecoregions in the tropical Andean countries, the historical continuity of conservation goals within Peru’s protected areas system (apparently the only topic with an author from the country being discussed, with Lily Rodriguez listed as the junior author), contradictions among conservation, globalization and democratization in the Maya Biosphere Reserve of Guatemala, decentralization, land policy, and politics of scale in Burkina Faso, and the impact of fences on the pastoral lifestyle of Inner Mongolia, China.
The volume clearly is focused on developing countries, implicitly as the victims of globalization rather than beneficiaries. Protected areas receive considerable attention as an international approach to ensuring the conservation of biodiversity in the face of global pressures for resource exploitation. The editor, in both his introductory chapter and concluding chapter, speaks for all of his collaborators, indicating that the book has a unified perspective rather than providing conflicting or at least contrary views on issues that remain highly controversial. But the volume also has numerous references at the end of each chapter, enabling further reading on any controversial topics. Virtually all of the chapters have location maps and other useful illustrations.
Several of the authors seem to take the position that protected areas are imposed by outside interests, even though protected areas invariably are established under national legislation and run by government institutions or local communities. The chapter on the Mekong Basin, for example, excoriates conservation advocates for inserting themselves into social conflicts over water in the basin, ignoring the reality that water decisions are being made far upstream, and that government agencies typically do not have the best interests of the local people in mind when making decisions on major development projects. The international conservation voice is a fairly modest balancing of the global demand for the resources of the Mekong Basin. The author is clearly concerned about the influence of international conservation organizations, even going so far as to claim that IUCN ’will receive a direct payment of USD 65 million from the World Bank… in exchange for support of Nam Theun 2’ (the latter a dam project). He also claims that freshwater biodiversity of the Mekong has been overlooked, despite the detailed work conducted by Karl Lagler, one of the world’s leading experts on freshwater fish when he conducted his research on the Mekong in the early 1970s.
The modern approach of conservation organizations is already following the prescriptions of this book, namely to recognize that the scales and networks that enable conservation to happen are constantly shifting and require approaches at all scales, from the local community to international environmental conventions. On the other hand, most conservation organizations also recognize the importance of development and ensuring that conservation and development are complementary and ideally mutually reinforcing. After all, virtually all of the landscapes that are now of international conservation interest have been significantly moulded by historical human influences. This book provides a useful perspective from sociology and geography on the complexity of human behaviour at the various scales being considered. It is particularly useful in identifying globalization as a fundamental force in driving land use in virtually all parts of the world. It is less helpful in offering solutions that have a realistic chance of working in the complex world of today’s population of over 6 billion consumers.
