Saving Forests, Protecting People?

Environmental Conservation in Central America

By (author) John Schelhas, Max J. Pfeffer

Publication date:

28 November 2007

Length of book:

330 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

ISBN-13: 9780759109469

Tropical forest conservation is attracting widespread public interest and helping to shape the ways in which environmental scientists and other groups approach global environmental issues. Schelhas and Pfeffer show that globally-driven forest conservation efforts have had different results in different places, ranging from violent protest to the discovery of common ground among conservation programs and the various interests of local peoples. The authors examine the connections between local values, material needs, and environmental management regimes. Saving Forests, Protecting People? explores that difficult terrain where culture, the environment, and social policies meet.

Preface
Introduction: Parks and protected areas in the process of environmental globalization
Study Sites
Diverse cultural models to manage competing interests in natural resource use in Costa Rica
Forest conservation, park management, and value change in Honduras
Conclusion: Situating environmental values in a globalizing world
Appendices 1-5

What happens when global concerns about conserving forests and wildlife run up against the reality that people rely on those resources to make a living? Schelhas and Pfeffer examine how rural communities in Costa Rica and Honduras think about forests and conservation—and they find that global discourses about the environment have reached the farthest corners of the earth, though local people reinterpret them to meet their needs. Saving Forests, Protecting People? brings these processes sharply into focus, which is essential if we are to find realistic solutions to the problems of conservation.