By Tracey Clunies-Ross, Nicholas Hildyard
September 30, 2020
In the last forty years, agriculture in the industrialised countries has undergone a revolution. That has dramatically increased yields, but it has also led to extensive rural depopulation; widespread degradation of the environment; contamination of food with agrochemicals and bacteria; more ...
By Robert Prescott-Allen, Christine Prescott-Allen
June 28, 2018
Tomatoes could not be grown commercially without the help of their wild relatives. A single wild species of rice has helped double rice production in Asia. Wild silk-worms are enabling India to expand its silk industry. A wild carp with resistance to cold has been used to extend Soviet carp ...
By Alan Grainger
January 15, 2018
Tropical rain forest is being cleared so rapidly and on such a scale that it is a major global environmental problem, threatening the survival of half of the world's plant and animal species and contributing to global climate change through the greenhouse effect. But, despite widespread concern for...
By Don Hinrichsen
August 26, 2016
Most of the world's population lives on or near the coasts. Every nation not completely landlocked has used the sea as its supposedly self-cleansing garbage dump. Now the effects are being felt. There is not a coast in the world which is not dangerously polluted. Sewage, oil, plastics, industrial ...
By Alan Grainger
June 08, 2015
Lands lost to desert may effectively be lost for ever, so desertification is humanity's most obvious despoliation to the planet. It is certainly one of the most serious environmental problems facing the world today. In this book the author describes what is happening and where. Although the problem...
By Gordon R. Conway, Edward B. Barbier
May 03, 2013
'The Green Revolution' of the 60's and 70's produced immense gains in food cereal production in the Third World. But there are huge problems in the 'post-revolutionary' era: farmers with small or marginal holdings have benefited less than wealthier farmers; intensive mono-cropping has made ...
By Winin Pereira, Jeremy Seabrook
October 01, 2009
The need to produce food without the destructive chemical horrors of much modern farming, for an intelligent use of dwindling natural resources and for humane forms of production is universal, the practice is limited. This book is an account of one, large, instance of success in practice. ...
By Duncan Poore
October 01, 2009
Much of the world's tropical timber is still supplied from natural forest, but under current systems of management the forests are rapidly becoming exhausted. Unless management practices change to become genuinely sustainable, neither the forests nor the essential contribution of the timber ...
By Caroline Sargent, Stephen Bass
October 01, 2009
Plantations are playing an increasingly important part in the development and the economies of the South. Plantation Politics is the first book to examine their rationale and purpose, exposing the misconceptions and myths that have surrounded their role, and describing the contribution they can ...
By Renee Vellve
October 01, 2009
Genetic diversity is essential to the security of agriculture. Without the availability of a wide range of plant varieties and the genetic resources they contain, crops cannot adapt to combat the ever-changing threats of pests, diseases and climatic change. Yet, with the increasing ...
By Judith Gradwohl, Russell Greenberg
October 01, 2009
The destruction of the tropical forest is one of the major problems of our time. Vast areas are rapidly becoming wastelands which support only a few tough weeds, perhaps some cattle, and the farms allowed to the poor. This book provides a vision of hope: in Latin America. Africa. And South East ...
By Peter Utting
October 01, 2009
Behind the headlines about the loss of tropical forests in Latin America lies a complex and fascinating story of the social pressures which cause it. Trees, People and Power looks at the various groups, interests and conflicts involved, and explores the repercussions for forestry, the environment ...