The destruction of tropical forests is intimately intertwined with the fate of the rural poor who rely on this resource for their livelihood. Conservation of Neotropical Forests provides important information for understanding the interactions of forest peoples and forest resources in the lowland tropics of Central and South America. This interdisciplinary study features experts from both the natural and social sciences to illuminate the present dilemma of conserving neotropical resources. These contributors--who are responsible for some of the most promising work in cultural and...

The United Nations University project on People, Land Management and Environmental Change (PLEC) has used the traditional skills of smallholder farmers -- for cultivating their crops, managing the soil, water and vegetation and maintaining their livelihoods in difficult circumstances - to produce this book. Arguably, these farmers have conserved and even created more biological diversity and more economically important species than all protected areas combined.
The book draws on the experience of demonstration sites that are the farmers' own enterprises, combining superior production...

Forests are in decline, and the threats these outposts of nature face--including deforestation, degradation, and fragmentation--are the result of human culture. Or are they? This volume calls these assumptions into question, revealing forests' past, present, and future conditions to be the joint products of a host of natural and cultural forces. Moreover, in many cases the coalescence of these forces--from local ecologies to competing knowledge systems--has masked a significant contemporary trend of woodland resurgence, even in the forests of the tropics.

Focusing on the history and...

This book takes a multi-disciplinary and critical look at what has changed over the last ten years in one of the world's most important and dynamic ecosystems, the Amazon floodplain or vArzea. It also looks forward, assessing the trends that will determine the fate of environments and people of the vArzea over the next ten years and providing crucial information that is needed to formulate strategies for confronting these looming realities.