Tropical Forests and the Human Spirit

Tropical Forests and the Human Spirit PDF Author: Roger D. Stone
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520230892
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
"This book is a remarkably personal report of the authors’ trans-tropical experiences with forest dwellers. The experience was extensive, sometimes spanning years, and the report is the work of professional reporters, experienced at reaching to the core of critical issues of life and survival. The story is not a pretty one, and the prognosis is not good. But in their eyes the key lies in restoring and defending the rights of forest dwellers and encouraging in every way their age-old interest in preserving the integrity of forest lands. The authors are familiar with the international agencies and their programs, their successes and failures. Roger Stone was intimately involved in the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development and draws heavily on that experience. The book will strengthen the conclusions of that Commission to the effect that the world’s future lies heavily entangled with the continuity of forests globally, and that continuity hinges on respect for local interests."—George M. Woodwell, Director, Woods Hole Research Center "For twenty years, we have watched TV specials on the destruction of tropical forests -- an acre a second lost, every second for twenty years. This beautifully written book takes you right to the middle of the current international debate about what to do about it. It pulls no punches and proposes its own provocative solution. It offers a perspective that cannot be ignored and an answer that needs to be tried."—James Gustave Speth, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science "For more than a century, the conservation movement has dedicated its energy to protecting the Earth’s biodiversity. WWF has built its conservation philosophy and foundation for over forty years on principles of sound science, effective public policy, and recognition of the fundamental role local people bring to achieving tangible conservation results on the ground. Roger Stone and Claudia D’Andrea take us on a tour of the tropical forested regions of the world and capture important lessons about the merits of local control over forest resources. Their wide-ranging portrayal of community-based forest management arrangements, set within the global context of deforestation and loss of biodiversity, provides compelling testimony to the wisdom of empowering local people and nurturing their spirit as effective forest stewards."—Kathryn S. Fuller, President, World Wildlife Fund

Tropical Forests and the Human Spirit

Tropical Forests and the Human Spirit PDF Author: Roger D. Stone
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520936072
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
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.

Tropical Forests and the Human Spirit: Journeys to the Brink of Hope

Tropical Forests and the Human Spirit: Journeys to the Brink of Hope PDF Author: Claudia;Stone D'Andrea (Roger D.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : de
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Trees and the Human Spirit

Trees and the Human Spirit PDF Author: Ruth Wilson
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527524361
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
This volume presents a treatise on trees and how they relate to the human spirit. Through its in-depth discussion of the meaning of trees, a need for a shift in thinking becomes clear. Historically, people in dominant cultures have viewed trees as resources to be used and forests as obstacles to such endeavors as farming and ranching. This publication presents a different view of trees and forests, one calling for a shift from domination and irreverence to respect and care—even kinship. While the text includes a discussion about some of the amazing characteristics of trees, the primary focus here is on the philosophical meaning of, and emotional connections with, trees. Its integration of disciplines and the recognition of different ways of knowing will make this book appealing to a wide variety of readers.

Jungle

Jungle PDF Author: Patrick Roberts
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 154160010X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
"A bold, ambitious and truly wonderful history of the world"—Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees From the age of dinosaurs to the first human cities, a groundbreaking new history of the planet that tropical forests made. To many of us, tropical forests are the domain of movies and novels. These dense, primordial wildernesses are beautiful to picture, but irrelevant to our lives. Jungle tells a different story. Archaeologist Patrick Roberts argues that tropical forests have shaped nearly every aspect of life on earth. They made the planet habitable, enabled the rise of dinosaurs and mammals, and spread flowering plants around the globe. New evidence also shows that humans evolved in jungles, developing agriculture and infrastructure unlike anything found elsewhere. Humanity’s fate is tied to the fate of tropical forests, and by understanding how earlier societies managed these habitats, we can learn to live more sustainably and equitably today. Blending cutting-edge research and incisive social commentary, Jungle is a bold new vision of who we are and where we come from.

Why Forests? Why Now?

Why Forests? Why Now? PDF Author: Frances Seymour
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 1933286865
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Tropical forests are an undervalued asset in meeting the greatest global challenges of our time—averting climate change and promoting development. Despite their importance, tropical forests and their ecosystems are being destroyed at a high and even increasing rate in most forest-rich countries. The good news is that the science, economics, and politics are aligned to support a major international effort over the next five years to reverse tropical deforestation. Why Forests? Why Now? synthesizes the latest evidence on the importance of tropical forests in a way that is accessible to anyone interested in climate change and development and to readers already familiar with the problem of deforestation. It makes the case to decisionmakers in rich countries that rewarding developing countries for protecting their forests is urgent, affordable, and achievable.

Tropical Nature

Tropical Nature PDF Author: Adrian Forsyth
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439144745
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Seventeen marvelous essays introducing the habitats, ecology, plants, and animals of the Central and South American rainforest. A lively, lucid portrait of the tropics as seen by two uncommonly observant and thoughtful field biologists. Its seventeen marvelous essays introduce the habitats, ecology, plants, and animals of the Central and South American rainforest. Includes a lengthy appendix of practical advice for the tropical traveler.

How Forests Think

How Forests Think PDF Author: Eduardo Kohn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520276108
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be humanÑand thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of EcuadorÕs Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the worldÕs most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting directionÐone that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.

Tropical Forests in Transition

Tropical Forests in Transition PDF Author: J. Goldammer
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3034872569
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In evolutionary time scales natural disturbances have affected the vegetation on Earth. During the Quaternary the forest biomes of the tropics were subjected to manifold disturbances. Climate changes and climate oscillations were associated with changing precipitation and drought regimes, flooding, siltation, landslides, etc. The prehistorical forest was also influenced by the effects of large wildlife populations. Large-scale catastrophies in the forest biomes were mainly caused by abiotic environmental alterations, the small-scale disturbances were and still are related to both biotic and abiotic processes. Both the large-and the small-scale disturbances have played a significant role in shaping distribution, dynamics, structure and composition of the paleoforest. After the expansion of hominids and early humans, and later, by modern humans, the anthropogenic influences on the tropical forest began to overlap natural disturbances. Today's anthropogenic impacts on the tropical forests differ qualitatively and quanitatively from the natural disturbances. The speed of tropical deforestation and savannization is dramatically increasing. The physical and chemical impacts of forest conversion and biomass burning add to other anthropogenic influences on the atmosphere and climate. The expected anthropogenic climate change will also have considerable impacts on the tropical flora and fauna. The book on "Tropical Forests in Transition" synthesizes information on changing environmental conditions and human impacts on the tropical forest by looking back to the paleoecology, analyzing the impact of modern human populations and modeling the future of the tropical forest in a changing environment. The aim of the book is to strengthen multidisciplinary thinking in disturbance ecology.

Tropical Forests

Tropical Forests PDF Author: Thomas K. Rudel
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231131940
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Known as "the Garbo of Chinese letters" for her elegance and the aura of mystery that surrounded her, Eileen Chang is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential modern Chinese novelists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. In Written on Water, first published in 1945 and now available for the first time in English, Chang offers essays on art, literature, war, and urban life, as well as autobiographical reflections. Chang takes in the sights and sounds of wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong, with the tremors of national upheaval and the drone of warplanes in the background, and inventively fuses explorations of urban life, literary trends, domestic habits, and historic events. These evocative and moving firsthand accounts examine the subtle and not-so-subtle effects of the Japanese bombing and occupation of Shanghai and Hong Kong. Eileen Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and her own experiences as a part-time nurse. Her nuanced depictions range from observations of how a woman's elegant dress affects morale to descriptions of hospital life. With a distinctive style that is at once meditative, vibrant, and humorous, Chang engages the reader through sly, ironic humor; an occasionally chatty tone; and an intense fascination with the subtleties of modern urban life. The collection vividly captures the sights and sounds of Shanghai, a city defined by its mix of tradition and modernity. Chang explores the city's food, fashions, shops, cultural life, and social mores; she reveals and upends prevalent attitudes toward women and in the process presents a portrait of a liberated, cosmopolitan woman, enjoying the opportunities, freedoms, and pleasures offered by urban life. In addition to her descriptions of daily life, Chang also reflects on a variety of artistic and literary issues, including contemporary films, the aims of the writer, the popularity of the Peking Opera, dance, and painting.

Tropical Forests in Human Prehistory, History, and Modernity

Tropical Forests in Human Prehistory, History, and Modernity PDF Author: Patrick Roberts
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191917264
Category : Ethnology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This text brings together evidence for the nature of human interactions with tropical forests on a global scale. Following a review of the natural history and variability of tropical forest ecosystems, the book takes a tour of human, and human ancestor, occupation and use of tropical forest environments through time.