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The political economy of forest use and management
Book reviews
offers concrete suggestions to help build a social theory of sustainable development. The primary focus of the book is on the creation of a new view of environmental ethics. It does not address how this ethic can become a part of the public imagination and how it can lead to concrete changes in the world economy. This deficiency is particularly evident in the essays on the role of religion in conservation. The essays on religion quote at length from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Isfamic scripture to support their positions on nature conservation. With little historical analysis of the nature of contemporary ideology, hegemony, and power, the essays are reduced to moralizing sermons. Modern science has been unable to develop an adequate critique of the problems of industrialism because it has engaged in a social construction of reality that serves the needs of modern industrialism. It is not clear how religion will be used to confront the ideological function of science when traditionally religion itself has been the archetypal engineer of the social construction of realities. The Engels deserve high commendation for bringing this project to
fruition. The book represents a timely piece of work. There is a real risk that ‘sustainable development’ may become the slogan for a new ecotechnical managerial world order and an ‘ethically vacuous camouflage for maintaining
the economic
growth
that
to begin with’. This book teaches us how to be on guard against such an eventuality. Another reason why the book is important is that the larger forces of contemporary history seem to take us away from the disciplined ethical reflection it advocates. At a time when a powerful critique of industrial economics is being launched, this voice is being drowned by the thundering stampede of communist political commissars rushing to learn ‘the laws of market economics’. and by the capitalist world’s own non-refiective, selfcongratulatory reaction to this - ‘We bave won’. created
the crises
Lakshman S. Yapa, Deparfment of Geography, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA ‘World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987.
Forest use - the search for equality and sustainability THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FOREST USE AND MANAGEMENT by M. V. Nadkarni with Syed Pasha and L. S. Prabhakar
Ajmal
Sage Publications,
1989,
New Delhi,
182 PP The relationship between ecology, environment, and the sustainable use of forest resources in the course of economic development has emerged as a major research focus in the social sciences. The book by Nadkarni and his colleagues makes an important contribution to this literature. Since forests have different uses and functions to different sets of interest groups, the use of forest resources is decided in the arena of political
260
economy: that is, through political struggle between vested interest groups. The struggle is not equitable, and the benefits of forest resource use usually go to one class, while the environmental costs are borne by another ciass. Through a historical and regionallevel study focusing on a forest region in the Western Ghats area of Karnataka State in South India, tne authors provide an analysis of struggle between three interested groups - the locals, the commercial interests of the larger economy, and the government, from around 1800 to the IOXOs. The impacts of the struggle, both on the health of forests and on the local economy, form the bulk of this study. The locals who live in the region are not a homogenous group. They com-
GLOBAL
prise tribals and other people with little or no land; merchants and forestproduce processors who serve the larger economy; and farmers and landed gentry with rich garden lands. The authors demonstrate, through a survey of households in selected villages in the study area, that locals have not been alienated from forest use, but they are not involved in forest management, regeneration, and conservation efforts. The local economy still depends significantly on forest use outside the market framework, but most of the benefits accrue to the richest classes of the rural society to support the cultivation of commercial garden crops. The study reveals that class differentiation within the rural society is an important factor affecting the quality of forest use. The commercial interests dominate the use of forests through influence on the government, which determines the process of commercialization of the forests and the integration of the forest region with the larger national economy. The process of commercialization is largely promoted by industrial capitalism. It has involved conflicts between locals and outside interests and the alienation of locals from management of local resources. The role of the government is to facilitate the developnlent process, regulate local use of resources, promote sustainable resource use, and reconcile short-term commercial and growth interests with long-term interests of conservation. The authors point out that the government, the most responsible, powerful, and farsighted of the three parties involved, has failed in its task in the study area. It developed a bureaucratic attitude, created a great divide between itself and local people, failed to establish a proper database to monitor the state of forests, and also yielded to a flood of pressure from the commercial interests. Although this study was done in India, the three main actors identified in the struggle for the use of forest resources and their responses to pressures from other actors, and also to technical changes in the larger national and global economy, provide an important conceptual framework in
ENVIRONMENTAL
CHANGE
June 1991
Book reviews/Publications
which to examine deforestation in other parts of the world. The concluding part of the book draws out some policy implications. The
weaknesses
of
the
and technocratic
solutions
of resource
and
use
bureaucratic to problems
management
are
exposed. The authors suggest alternative institutional forms involving the locals, particularly the poor peasants and the landless, in the management and preservation of forests. The authors point out that a politic-
al economy favouring unsustainable use can be altered by arousing public conscience. In India the development of public opinion towards a recognition of the need for sustainability of resource use led to the formulation of a new price policy for forest products, which takes into account the cost of regeneration and sustainability of resource supply. These types of policies are succeeding in restraining the powerful vested industrial and commercial interests.
Environmental progress in the Baltic - a retrospective COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY FOR THE BALTIC: AN ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACH edited by Arthur H. Westing International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, in cooperation with the United Nations Environmental Programme and Sage Publications, London, 1989, xii + 148 pp This book consists of a collection of papers contributed to an international symposium, the participants at which were from the USA, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and the FRG. There were
also participants representing the United Nations Environment Programme. The Baltic region, as the participants defined it, included all of the above countries, plus the USSR, Latvia, Lithuania, and what was then East Germany. One of the main concerns of the book, as the editor suggests, was to consider whether cooperation between NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and neutral countries would be likely to lead to a lessening of tension in the region at political and military levels. While the contributors appear to have shared the hope that this was in fact the case, they were unfortunately (or fortunately!) unable to provide any
Publications
How successful similar institutional innovations will be in other countries is an open question. But this book provides interesting and stimulating ideas. It should be of interest to social scientists concerned with ecology, environment, and the sustainable use of natural resources. P. P. Karan Department of Geography University of Kentucky Lexington, KY, USA clear answer to the question, as they were overtaken by events. In reality the ending of the Cold War has provided us with the opportunity to cooperate in solving the major environmental problems of the region, and not vice versa. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the rather amazing recent political changes render this book out of date, for it provides a detailed and valuable survey of the agencies for international cooperation which had in fact been established by 1989, and of the progress which they had achieved. In particular, the book provides us with much useful information on progress made in limiting fishery catches, and in monitoring the quality of the Baltic Sea itself. Eric Reade Liding6, Sweden
Global Environmental Issues: a Climatological Approach by David D. Kemp (Routledge, London, UK, 1990, 220 pp, $15.95)
Acid Politics: Environmental and Energy Policies in Britain and Germany by Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen and Jim Skea (Belhaven Press, London, UK, 1991, 296 pp, f39.50)
Breakthroughs on Hunger: a Journalist’s Encounter with Global Change by Richard M. Harley (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, USA, 1990, 169 pp, $24.95 hb, $12.95 pb)
Global Warming: What Does Science Tell Us? by Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg and Frederick Seitz (George C. Marshall Institute, Washington, DC. USA, 1990, 72 pp)
Barriers to a Better Environment by S.T. Trudgill (Belhaven Press, London, UK. 1990, 151 pp, $54.50)
Conservation for the Twenty-first Century edited by David Western and Mary Pearl (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. 1989, 365 pp, $36.95)
Green Futures for Economic Growth: Britain in 2010 edited by Terry Barker (Cambridge Econometrics. Cambridge, UK, 1991, 137 pp, f28.75)
Dictionary of the Environment by Michael Allaby (New York University Press, New York, NY. USA, 1989, 423 pp, $17.50)
Integrated Water Management: International Experiences and Perspectives edited by Bruce Mitchell (Belhaven Press, London. UK, 1990, 225 pp, $39.00)
Between Two Worlds: Science, the Environmental Movement and Policy Choice by Lynton Keith Caldwell (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990, 224 pp, $44.50) Biotic Diversity in Southern Africa: Concepts and Conservation edited by B.J. Huntley (Oxford University Press, Cape Town, South Africa, 1989, 380 pp, $35.00)
GLOBAL
ENVIRONMENTAL
Earth Observations and Global Change Decision Making 1989: a National Partnership edited by Irving W. Ginsberg and Joseph A. Angelo (Krieger Publishing Co, Malabar, FL, USA, 1990, 355 pp)
CHANGE
June 1991
Nothing to Fear: Risks and Hazards in American Society by Andrew Kirby (The University of Arizona Press, Tuscan, AZ, USA, 1990, 301 pp, $29.95)
261
offers concrete suggestions to help build a social theory of sustainable development. The primary focus of the book is on the creation of a new view of environmental ethics. It does not address how this ethic can become a part of the public imagination and how it can lead to concrete changes in the world economy. This deficiency is particularly evident in the essays on the role of religion in conservation. The essays on religion quote at length from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Isfamic scripture to support their positions on nature conservation. With little historical analysis of the nature of contemporary ideology, hegemony, and power, the essays are reduced to moralizing sermons. Modern science has been unable to develop an adequate critique of the problems of industrialism because it has engaged in a social construction of reality that serves the needs of modern industrialism. It is not clear how religion will be used to confront the ideological function of science when traditionally religion itself has been the archetypal engineer of the social construction of realities. The Engels deserve high commendation for bringing this project to
fruition. The book represents a timely piece of work. There is a real risk that ‘sustainable development’ may become the slogan for a new ecotechnical managerial world order and an ‘ethically vacuous camouflage for maintaining
the economic
growth
that
to begin with’. This book teaches us how to be on guard against such an eventuality. Another reason why the book is important is that the larger forces of contemporary history seem to take us away from the disciplined ethical reflection it advocates. At a time when a powerful critique of industrial economics is being launched, this voice is being drowned by the thundering stampede of communist political commissars rushing to learn ‘the laws of market economics’. and by the capitalist world’s own non-refiective, selfcongratulatory reaction to this - ‘We bave won’. created
the crises
Lakshman S. Yapa, Deparfment of Geography, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA ‘World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987.
Forest use - the search for equality and sustainability THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FOREST USE AND MANAGEMENT by M. V. Nadkarni with Syed Pasha and L. S. Prabhakar
Ajmal
Sage Publications,
1989,
New Delhi,
182 PP The relationship between ecology, environment, and the sustainable use of forest resources in the course of economic development has emerged as a major research focus in the social sciences. The book by Nadkarni and his colleagues makes an important contribution to this literature. Since forests have different uses and functions to different sets of interest groups, the use of forest resources is decided in the arena of political
260
economy: that is, through political struggle between vested interest groups. The struggle is not equitable, and the benefits of forest resource use usually go to one class, while the environmental costs are borne by another ciass. Through a historical and regionallevel study focusing on a forest region in the Western Ghats area of Karnataka State in South India, tne authors provide an analysis of struggle between three interested groups - the locals, the commercial interests of the larger economy, and the government, from around 1800 to the IOXOs. The impacts of the struggle, both on the health of forests and on the local economy, form the bulk of this study. The locals who live in the region are not a homogenous group. They com-
GLOBAL
prise tribals and other people with little or no land; merchants and forestproduce processors who serve the larger economy; and farmers and landed gentry with rich garden lands. The authors demonstrate, through a survey of households in selected villages in the study area, that locals have not been alienated from forest use, but they are not involved in forest management, regeneration, and conservation efforts. The local economy still depends significantly on forest use outside the market framework, but most of the benefits accrue to the richest classes of the rural society to support the cultivation of commercial garden crops. The study reveals that class differentiation within the rural society is an important factor affecting the quality of forest use. The commercial interests dominate the use of forests through influence on the government, which determines the process of commercialization of the forests and the integration of the forest region with the larger national economy. The process of commercialization is largely promoted by industrial capitalism. It has involved conflicts between locals and outside interests and the alienation of locals from management of local resources. The role of the government is to facilitate the developnlent process, regulate local use of resources, promote sustainable resource use, and reconcile short-term commercial and growth interests with long-term interests of conservation. The authors point out that the government, the most responsible, powerful, and farsighted of the three parties involved, has failed in its task in the study area. It developed a bureaucratic attitude, created a great divide between itself and local people, failed to establish a proper database to monitor the state of forests, and also yielded to a flood of pressure from the commercial interests. Although this study was done in India, the three main actors identified in the struggle for the use of forest resources and their responses to pressures from other actors, and also to technical changes in the larger national and global economy, provide an important conceptual framework in
ENVIRONMENTAL
CHANGE
June 1991
Book reviews/Publications
which to examine deforestation in other parts of the world. The concluding part of the book draws out some policy implications. The
weaknesses
of
the
and technocratic
solutions
of resource
and
use
bureaucratic to problems
management
are
exposed. The authors suggest alternative institutional forms involving the locals, particularly the poor peasants and the landless, in the management and preservation of forests. The authors point out that a politic-
al economy favouring unsustainable use can be altered by arousing public conscience. In India the development of public opinion towards a recognition of the need for sustainability of resource use led to the formulation of a new price policy for forest products, which takes into account the cost of regeneration and sustainability of resource supply. These types of policies are succeeding in restraining the powerful vested industrial and commercial interests.
Environmental progress in the Baltic - a retrospective COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY FOR THE BALTIC: AN ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACH edited by Arthur H. Westing International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, in cooperation with the United Nations Environmental Programme and Sage Publications, London, 1989, xii + 148 pp This book consists of a collection of papers contributed to an international symposium, the participants at which were from the USA, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and the FRG. There were
also participants representing the United Nations Environment Programme. The Baltic region, as the participants defined it, included all of the above countries, plus the USSR, Latvia, Lithuania, and what was then East Germany. One of the main concerns of the book, as the editor suggests, was to consider whether cooperation between NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and neutral countries would be likely to lead to a lessening of tension in the region at political and military levels. While the contributors appear to have shared the hope that this was in fact the case, they were unfortunately (or fortunately!) unable to provide any
Publications
How successful similar institutional innovations will be in other countries is an open question. But this book provides interesting and stimulating ideas. It should be of interest to social scientists concerned with ecology, environment, and the sustainable use of natural resources. P. P. Karan Department of Geography University of Kentucky Lexington, KY, USA clear answer to the question, as they were overtaken by events. In reality the ending of the Cold War has provided us with the opportunity to cooperate in solving the major environmental problems of the region, and not vice versa. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the rather amazing recent political changes render this book out of date, for it provides a detailed and valuable survey of the agencies for international cooperation which had in fact been established by 1989, and of the progress which they had achieved. In particular, the book provides us with much useful information on progress made in limiting fishery catches, and in monitoring the quality of the Baltic Sea itself. Eric Reade Liding6, Sweden
Global Environmental Issues: a Climatological Approach by David D. Kemp (Routledge, London, UK, 1990, 220 pp, $15.95)
Acid Politics: Environmental and Energy Policies in Britain and Germany by Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen and Jim Skea (Belhaven Press, London, UK, 1991, 296 pp, f39.50)
Breakthroughs on Hunger: a Journalist’s Encounter with Global Change by Richard M. Harley (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, USA, 1990, 169 pp, $24.95 hb, $12.95 pb)
Global Warming: What Does Science Tell Us? by Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg and Frederick Seitz (George C. Marshall Institute, Washington, DC. USA, 1990, 72 pp)
Barriers to a Better Environment by S.T. Trudgill (Belhaven Press, London, UK. 1990, 151 pp, $54.50)
Conservation for the Twenty-first Century edited by David Western and Mary Pearl (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. 1989, 365 pp, $36.95)
Green Futures for Economic Growth: Britain in 2010 edited by Terry Barker (Cambridge Econometrics. Cambridge, UK, 1991, 137 pp, f28.75)
Dictionary of the Environment by Michael Allaby (New York University Press, New York, NY. USA, 1989, 423 pp, $17.50)
Integrated Water Management: International Experiences and Perspectives edited by Bruce Mitchell (Belhaven Press, London. UK, 1990, 225 pp, $39.00)
Between Two Worlds: Science, the Environmental Movement and Policy Choice by Lynton Keith Caldwell (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990, 224 pp, $44.50) Biotic Diversity in Southern Africa: Concepts and Conservation edited by B.J. Huntley (Oxford University Press, Cape Town, South Africa, 1989, 380 pp, $35.00)
GLOBAL
ENVIRONMENTAL
Earth Observations and Global Change Decision Making 1989: a National Partnership edited by Irving W. Ginsberg and Joseph A. Angelo (Krieger Publishing Co, Malabar, FL, USA, 1990, 355 pp)
CHANGE
June 1991
Nothing to Fear: Risks and Hazards in American Society by Andrew Kirby (The University of Arizona Press, Tuscan, AZ, USA, 1990, 301 pp, $29.95)
261