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The evaluation of land resources
106
Book Reviews
The Evaluation
of Land Resources, D.A. Davidson, 198 pp., 1992, Longman Scientific and Technical, Harlow, &13 pbk
Donald Davidson provides an up-to-date overview of land use issues, land resources surveys and their inte~retation. Special attention is given to recent advances in computerbased land resource information systems and the modelling of land resources. Introductory chapters review the needs for land information and the various surveys and inte~retations that have arisen to meet these needs. Initially the treatment is light, but becomes increasingly meaty as we approach the heart of the book where there are solid chapters on soil survey, land capability, FAG-style land evaluation and interpretations of soil data for urban development, irrigation and forestry. Extensive extracts from original sources are given, followed by many examples and supported by more than 350 references up to 1991, including useful handbooks, accessible research papers and to specimen survey reports. This is a good format for a textbook. The sheer mass of information, the value of integrating data from different facets of the environment, and the need to present information in a form usable by decisionmakers leads naturally to the discussion of data base computer-based geographic information management, systems and quantitative modelling of land resources. Here the author, in his enthusiasm, frequently lapses into GISPEAK for which no glossary is provided. The range of topics addressed convincingly demonstrates the potential of these new tools. There is enough depth of treatment to explain the principles involved and selected references to enable the reader to take further any topics of special interest. Although social and economic considerations are eschewed for the most part, they are brought into the concluding section on integrated land evaluation. I am glad that f was asked to review this book, although I should have bought it anyway - it is well written, well illustrated and very good value. Above all, it brings together in a slim volume very many advances in the techniques of land evaluation that have almost exploded in the last 10 years. I take issue only with David Davidson’s unbridled optimism! No failures are reported! These new techniques of land evaluation are not being applied by many of the surveyors who gathered the basic data and who have intimate knowledge of the land and the strengths and weaknesses of the data. And they are still too complex, and too costly in time and scarce expertise, to be accessible to most planners, managers and users of the land. There is still work for the next edition. DAVID DENT School of Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, V. K.
Post Environmentalism,
Belhaven,
John Young, London, f10.99 pbk
225 pp.,
1992,
This is a conspicuously well-meaning book which aims to identify the intellectual and political sources of modern
environmentalism. It also seeks to point the direction for future developments in the elaboration of an ecological worldview and an ecological politics - ‘post environmentalism’ is the author’s name for this future direction, The book thus sets out to offer both analysis and a vision. My difficulty with it was that it was neither inspiring enough to supply a powerful vision nor analytically sophisticated enough to advance scholarly work on the politics and sociology of the green movement. In illustration of this latter point let me take three issues which Young correctly identifies as central to the development of environmentalism. First, he is quite right to argue that scientific evidence has a key role to play in advancing greens’ arguments, and in his chapter ‘Science to the rescue’ he makes some sharp observations about the constraints placed on scientists working in the institutions and ~orporaiions of the modern world. But his discussion pays no attention to any of the recent scholarly work on the role of scientific advice in the policy process or on the sociology and politics of scientific knowledge (work found in abundance in such journals as Social Studies of Science). The reader who pursued the author’s recommendations for further literature on science and environmentalism would be similarly left in the dark and could easily conclude that there was next to nothing written in the 1980s which had a bearing on this subject at all. The true state of affairs is very different; indeed, there are major figures in the U.K., Germany and the U.S.A. working precisely on this issue (for example, Jasanoff, Beck and Wynne, respectively). The reader is left uninformed of this work and Young’s analysis is far less deep than it might have been had he attended to these analytic traditions. A second example reveals the same kind of limitation. This time the issue concerns the identity of the supporters of the green movement. Young correctly notes that there is a problem in identifying which groups or social classes might be receptive to a deep green argument. And quite reasonably on page 144 he cites a sociological study which investigates the composition of the ‘green constituency’. The sting in the tail, however, is that the one study he chooses to cite was published in 1968 and he offers no discussion of any subsequent studies - despite the fact that there are at least three British books on the green movement which had already been published by the early 1980s. My final example concerns environmental NGOs themselves. Groups such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth crop up numerous times in this book, just as one would anticipate. There is even an interesting paragraph on the Green Alliance and the Australian Conservation Foundation, both lobby groups rather than movement organisations. But sociological and political science analyses of the dynamics of NGOs are barely used, even though they are well represented in the literature on environmentalism. Thus a major source of valuable, empirically based insights into the likely constraints on the development of ‘post environmentalism’ is hardly employed at all. Although these three examples could be multiplied, I do not wish to give the impression that I found no sympathy with the book’s objectives. Any student of environmentalism is likely to find many points of agreement with Young’s text. My regret was that the book could quite easily have been much better argued, and that any reader who started exploring environmentalism through this
Book Reviews
The Evaluation
of Land Resources, D.A. Davidson, 198 pp., 1992, Longman Scientific and Technical, Harlow, &13 pbk
Donald Davidson provides an up-to-date overview of land use issues, land resources surveys and their inte~retation. Special attention is given to recent advances in computerbased land resource information systems and the modelling of land resources. Introductory chapters review the needs for land information and the various surveys and inte~retations that have arisen to meet these needs. Initially the treatment is light, but becomes increasingly meaty as we approach the heart of the book where there are solid chapters on soil survey, land capability, FAG-style land evaluation and interpretations of soil data for urban development, irrigation and forestry. Extensive extracts from original sources are given, followed by many examples and supported by more than 350 references up to 1991, including useful handbooks, accessible research papers and to specimen survey reports. This is a good format for a textbook. The sheer mass of information, the value of integrating data from different facets of the environment, and the need to present information in a form usable by decisionmakers leads naturally to the discussion of data base computer-based geographic information management, systems and quantitative modelling of land resources. Here the author, in his enthusiasm, frequently lapses into GISPEAK for which no glossary is provided. The range of topics addressed convincingly demonstrates the potential of these new tools. There is enough depth of treatment to explain the principles involved and selected references to enable the reader to take further any topics of special interest. Although social and economic considerations are eschewed for the most part, they are brought into the concluding section on integrated land evaluation. I am glad that f was asked to review this book, although I should have bought it anyway - it is well written, well illustrated and very good value. Above all, it brings together in a slim volume very many advances in the techniques of land evaluation that have almost exploded in the last 10 years. I take issue only with David Davidson’s unbridled optimism! No failures are reported! These new techniques of land evaluation are not being applied by many of the surveyors who gathered the basic data and who have intimate knowledge of the land and the strengths and weaknesses of the data. And they are still too complex, and too costly in time and scarce expertise, to be accessible to most planners, managers and users of the land. There is still work for the next edition. DAVID DENT School of Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, V. K.
Post Environmentalism,
Belhaven,
John Young, London, f10.99 pbk
225 pp.,
1992,
This is a conspicuously well-meaning book which aims to identify the intellectual and political sources of modern
environmentalism. It also seeks to point the direction for future developments in the elaboration of an ecological worldview and an ecological politics - ‘post environmentalism’ is the author’s name for this future direction, The book thus sets out to offer both analysis and a vision. My difficulty with it was that it was neither inspiring enough to supply a powerful vision nor analytically sophisticated enough to advance scholarly work on the politics and sociology of the green movement. In illustration of this latter point let me take three issues which Young correctly identifies as central to the development of environmentalism. First, he is quite right to argue that scientific evidence has a key role to play in advancing greens’ arguments, and in his chapter ‘Science to the rescue’ he makes some sharp observations about the constraints placed on scientists working in the institutions and ~orporaiions of the modern world. But his discussion pays no attention to any of the recent scholarly work on the role of scientific advice in the policy process or on the sociology and politics of scientific knowledge (work found in abundance in such journals as Social Studies of Science). The reader who pursued the author’s recommendations for further literature on science and environmentalism would be similarly left in the dark and could easily conclude that there was next to nothing written in the 1980s which had a bearing on this subject at all. The true state of affairs is very different; indeed, there are major figures in the U.K., Germany and the U.S.A. working precisely on this issue (for example, Jasanoff, Beck and Wynne, respectively). The reader is left uninformed of this work and Young’s analysis is far less deep than it might have been had he attended to these analytic traditions. A second example reveals the same kind of limitation. This time the issue concerns the identity of the supporters of the green movement. Young correctly notes that there is a problem in identifying which groups or social classes might be receptive to a deep green argument. And quite reasonably on page 144 he cites a sociological study which investigates the composition of the ‘green constituency’. The sting in the tail, however, is that the one study he chooses to cite was published in 1968 and he offers no discussion of any subsequent studies - despite the fact that there are at least three British books on the green movement which had already been published by the early 1980s. My final example concerns environmental NGOs themselves. Groups such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth crop up numerous times in this book, just as one would anticipate. There is even an interesting paragraph on the Green Alliance and the Australian Conservation Foundation, both lobby groups rather than movement organisations. But sociological and political science analyses of the dynamics of NGOs are barely used, even though they are well represented in the literature on environmentalism. Thus a major source of valuable, empirically based insights into the likely constraints on the development of ‘post environmentalism’ is hardly employed at all. Although these three examples could be multiplied, I do not wish to give the impression that I found no sympathy with the book’s objectives. Any student of environmentalism is likely to find many points of agreement with Young’s text. My regret was that the book could quite easily have been much better argued, and that any reader who started exploring environmentalism through this