How do societies negotiate the apparently competing agendas of environmental protection and social justice? Why do some countries perform much better than others on this front?

Democracy in the Woods addresses these question by examining land rights conflicts-and the fate of forest-dependent peasants-in the context of the different forest property regimes in India, Tanzania, and Mexico. These three countries are prominent in the scholarship and policy debates about national forest policies and land conflicts associated with international support for nature conservation. This...