Claudia D’Andrea & Roger D. Stone 
Tropical Forests and the Human Spirit 
Journeys to the Brink of Hope

Tropical forests are vanishing at an alarming rate. This book, based on extensive international field research, highlights one solution for preserving this precious resource: empowering local people who depend on the forest for survival. Synthesizing a vast amount of information that has never been brought together in one place, Roger D. Stone and Claudia D’Andrea provide a clearly written and energizing tour of global efforts to empower community-based forest stewards. Along the way, they show the fundamental importance of tropical forest ecosystems and deepen our sense of urgency to save them for the benefit of billions of rural people in tropical and subtropical regions as well as for countless species of plants and animals.


In their travels to research this book, the authors saw many remarkable examples of how proficient even the poorest local people can be in stabilizing and recovering formerly destitute forests. With engagingly written case studies from Thailand’s Golden Triangle to Mindanao in the Philippines, from Indonesia, India, and Africa to Brazil, Mexico, and Central America, they introduce us to the communities and the individuals, the governments, the loggers, the agencies, and the local groups who vie for forest resources. Contrasting community-based efforts and traditional forest management with government and donor efforts, they discuss the many reasons why international institutions and national governments have been unable and unwilling to stem the accelerating loss of tropical forestland.


This book argues we are paying a terrible price–politically, economically, and environmentally–for allowing tropical forests to be stripped. Community-based forestry is no panacea, but this book clearly shows its effectiveness as a management technique.

Table of Content

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction


Part I.

The Dismal Record

1. Forest Use and Misuse

2. Why Tropical Forests Decline


Part II. Stirrings in the Field

3. The Road to Bendum

4. Village Forests in India

5. Conservation in Indonesia

6. Africa’s Cornucopia and Scorpion

7. Learning from Latin America


Part III. The Way Ahead

8. Shifting the Balance

9. Helping from Afar

10. Future Imperatives


Notes

Further Reading

Index

About the author

Roger D. Stone is Director and President of the Sustainable Development Institute and author of The Nature of Development (1992), The Voyage of the Sanderling (1991), and Dreams of Amazonia (1985). Claudia D’Andrea is Research Associate at the Sustainable Development Institute.