Book Reviews

Bennett, Brett. 2015. Plantations and Protected Areas: A Global History of Forest Management.
剑桥, 嘛: 与新闻界.

Reviewed by Gabriela Bueno Gibbs
University of Massachusetts Boston

Plantations and Protected Areas provides a historical overview of changes in for-
est management models and the ways that developing and developed coun-
tries have attempted to reconcile forest protection with exploitation. 主要的
argument is that globalization has caused the fall of the conservation model,
which embraced the integration of forest conservation and extraction. 反而,
what emerged beginning in the 1980s was what Bennett calls “forest manage-
ment divergence,” between two processes: the creation of forest plantations
for timber production, and of protected areas for conservation.

The main focus of the book is the history of forestry science itself, 和
how it has shaped forest management and policy in both the developing and
the developed worlds. Bennett traces a rich history of forestry, from its emer-
gence in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, until what he argues is its decline
in the 21st century. We learn about the origins of forest science in Germany,
and how early thinkers espoused the idea of sustainable harvest of wood. 我们
also learn that one of the great forestry experiments—the creation, and world-
wide expansion, of plantations of exotic species (namely eucalyptus)—ended
up creating severe side effects, such as forest degradation and loss of income in
local economies.

In the last two chapters, Bennett discusses the re-emergence of calls for
protected forests and the public’s discontent with the clear-cutting of native
forests. He argues that this period also saw a decline in the legitimacy of tra-
ditional forestry and the rise of other sciences, such as conservation biology.
He also provides a wealth of information and history about the power of
individuals in shaping and inﬂuencing forest management worldwide, 从
Hans Carl von Carlowitz, whose writings on timber protection inspired for-
estry thinkers in the late 18th century, to Jack Westoby, a former high-ranking
ofﬁcial at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), whose views on for-
estry and development evolved and inﬂuenced the organization.

Global Environmental Politics 17:1, 二月 2017
© 2017 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

125

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126 (西德:129) Book Reviews

One of the limitations of the book is that its title promises a global his-
tory of forest management, but its discussion focuses on only a few countries
in depth. It sometimes reads more like a detailed analysis of the history of
forestry in the United States and other developed countries. This does not min-
imize the importance of the book in providing a general overview of forestry
via speciﬁc cases, but it is worth noting the limitations of the term “global.”
The book also does not include international forest politics. There are sparse
references to the FAO and the World Heritage Convention, but the book does
not at all discuss key international processes that have shaped the discourse of
forest management and protection, starting with the International Tropical Timber
Agreement in the 1980s, extending through the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development in the 1990s, to the United Nations Forum on
Forests in the 2000s.

Despite these gaps, the book is an accessible and interesting read for any-
one who is looking to learn more about forestry and the challenges of forest
保护. It illuminates the historical roots of many of today’s disagreements
over forest management. 例如, Bennett explains that early on in the
emergence of forest science, foresters blamed forest dwellers as the perpetra-
tors of deforestation and forest degradation, and “argued that the private sec-
tor and individuals living near forests could not be trusted to sustainably
manage forests in perpetuity” (p. 22). This belief has prevailed until recently
(现在仍然如此, in some countries), preventing traditional and indigenous
communities from managing their own land.

Toward the end of the book, Bennett suggests a shift in forest manage-
ment processes to becoming more interdisciplinary and inclusive of local
社区, a recommendation that has featured in national debates and
international negotiations for the past decade. Some of his other suggestions
include putting a higher price on timber and decentralizing forest-related
决策. 更重要的是, he argues that “public and forest experts
should be wary of embracing policies that entirely decouple timber production
from forest protection,” and that “decoupling production from protection will
continue to devalue the cost of native forest timber” (p. 151).

These recommendations do not seem to target a speciﬁc country or
group of countries, and one may wonder what types of conditions would have
to be in place to make them work in both developing and developed coun-
尝试. What is also missing are stories in which forest management, in any
形式, has actually succeeded. The author notes that “numerous examples of
successful selective management programs that have been developed for a
diverse range of ecological and social systems have emerged” (p. 155), 但
we do not hear about them.

仍然, the focus on mistakes and misconceptions that have been carried out
since the 18th century is useful. Bennett’s book is a necessary and important
narrative of past wrongs, one that can inform forest protection and manage-
ment in the 21st century and beyond.

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Stefﬁ Hamann, Brendan Schwartz, and Adam Sneyd

(西德:129) 127

Markham, William T., and Lotsmart Fonjong. 2015. Saving the Environment in Sub-
Saharan Africa: Organizational Dynamics and Effectiveness of NGOs in Cameroon. 纽约:
帕尔格雷夫·麦克米伦.

Reviewed by Stefﬁ Hamann
University of Guelph

Brendan Schwartz
Independent Researcher

Adam Sneyd
University of Guelph

Saving the Environment in Sub-Saharan Africa provides much needed insight into
the landscape of environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 在一个
context where data and information are not yet readily available. William T.
Markham and Lotsmart Fonjong undertook the laborious task of surveying
ﬁfty-two environmental NGOs in Cameroon to conduct an organizational anal-
分析, provide a comparative overview, and illustrate the vast internal diversity of
that country’s NGO sector. This book offers a direct challenge to a literature that
has tended to portray NGOs as “ideal types,” and in so doing it offers a com-
prehensive summary of the heterogeneous goals, 结构, 策略, and activ-
ities of the NGOs in their sample.

Given that many of Africa’s environmental challenges have global ramiﬁ-
cations and affect development outcomes in ways that increasingly draw the
attention of nonstate actors, this book is both timely and relevant. 作者
deﬁne environmental NGOs as “nonproﬁt organizations pursuing environ-
mental goals that are formed voluntarily, are not agencies of government, 和
are at least somewhat formalized; 那是, they have established goals, 规则, 和
procedures and formally established leadership roles” (p. 41). 因为
authors lacked access to an ofﬁcial list of active NGOs in Cameroon, they note
that their sampling methodology had inevitable imperfections. As a compro-
mise to shed light on the range of environmental NGOs in Cameroon, 他们
ensured that the organizations they sampled were diverse in terms of their legal
地位, 尺寸, 资源, environmental goals, and geographical locations. 尽管
acknowledging that no single country can be considered “typical” for sub-Saharan
非洲, they chose Cameroon as a case for this study because it is a country that
is arguably “as typical as it gets.” Known as “Africa in miniature,” Cameroon hosts
an array of biodiverse ecosystems. It also features a vast rural population and
large urban centers, and it experienced a turbulent colonial history that continues
to percolate today in the legacies of French, 英国人, and German rule.

The authors relied on in-depth interviews and a review of relevant docu-
ments to conduct a classical organizational analysis. The core questions they set
out to answer about NGOs were straightforward: What goals do they choose?
What strategies, 活动, and structures do they select to pursue their goals?
What factors affect their choices? How successful are they in reaching their
目标? And what factors affect their success? Markham and Fonjong assert that

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128 (西德:129) Book Reviews

this empirical approach is the most suitable for the analysis of Cameroonian
NGOs. Its focus on the day-to-day real world of these organizations avoids
the scattershot generalizations that overly theoretical orientations on this topic
have produced. The book is rooted in an understanding that the academic lit-
erature originating in the Global North tends to emphasize liberal democracy
and the contributions that NGOs make to democratization processes as part
of civil society, or alternatively, to social movements and the politically conten-
tious repertoires of environmental organizations. The authors argue that these
perspectives can hardly be applied to the Cameroonian context, 哪里的
formation of NGOs was banned until 1990 and confrontational campaigns
continue to be rare. Markham and Fonjong address the complex interrelations
among the country’s colonial legacy, vast internal diversity, economic chal-
伦格斯, and inefﬁcient political system, to present a comprehensive picture of
the context that has complicated the development of a vibrant NGO landscape.
This book ultimately elaborates an NGO typology that stands as its most
important conceptual and theoretical contribution. Instead of focusing on goal
orientation, this categorization homes in on ﬁnancial resources, staff size, facil-
实体, and levels of expertise. Markham and Fonjong distinguish international
NGOs from Cameroonian organizations, and subdivide the latter into two
类型. International NGOs have headquarters abroad and are comparatively
well-funded and well-equipped, due to an international mass-membership base.
Cameroonian NGOs, 反过来, are funded, 引领, and staffed by Cameroonians.
Type I NGOs can rely on relatively stable levels of funding and several paid
雇员, including expert staff. Type II NGOs, 相比之下, are characterized
by unstable funding, inadequate ofﬁce facilities, and small staff size; 有时,
an entire organization may be based exclusively on volunteer work. In describing
the goals and challenges of these environmental organizations, and their rela-
tionships with government, their local communities, and each other, 作者
successfully strike a balance between academic theory and development practice.
They provide an insightful overview and do not hide the fact that some NGO actors
have been coopted by the country’s prevailing system of corruption and clientelism,
whereas many others have adopted a hands-off approach to avoid government
interaction altogether. Environmental NGOs in Cameroon are not necessarily a
widespread democratizing force, but they fulﬁll key roles in local contexts to
combat pollution, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and numerous other challenges.
Saving the Environment in Sub-Saharan Africa leaves as many questions open
as it answers. As an entry point for future comparative work on this topic across
国家, the book offers a useful guide for others keen to research the environ-
mental NGO landscape. 那就是说, the study does lack an informative index of
the speciﬁc organizations, and is devoid of rich descriptions of individual pro-
ﬁles or cases. Readers are inevitably left thirsting for a thicker analysis after being
presented with keyword-ﬁlled summary tables in the results chapters. 这
authors could also have offered more illustrative case studies of concrete NGO
activities to elucidate their key ﬁndings.

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Fariborz Zelli (西德:129) 129

Beyond those minor stylistic points, the book was purposefully written to
be accessible to both academics and development practitioners. Those looking
for a well-structured overview of NGO-related theories will ﬁnd it in chapter 2.
For a comprehensive snapshot of the political, 社会的, 经济的, and environ-
mental contexts that have shaped and that characterize contemporary Cameroon,
turn to chapter 5, which presents a gold mine of quality research for comparative
学习. Each chapter is usefully summarized at the end for easy reference, 和
the ﬁnal chapter is separated into two sections: one addressing academic readers
interested in theory development, and the other outlining research-based recom-
mendations for practitioners. Readers in the academy and beyond will appreciate
the book’s jargon-free style and clarity. It is worth checking out.

Nicholson, 西蒙, and Sikina Jinnah, 编辑. 2016. New Earth Politics: Essays from the
Anthropocene. 剑桥, 嘛: 与新闻界.

Reviewed by Fariborz Zelli
Lund University
“We are the asteroid” (p. 5) claim the editors of New Earth Politics in their intro-
归纳法. This expression encapsulates what united some of the leading re-
searchers on global environmental governance in this volume. The result is
sixteen “essays from the Anthropocene,” an era that, for Simon Nicholson and
Sikina Jinnah, “has the potential to be long and dark” (p. 4).

迄今为止, so gloomy—and so familiar. Scholarly work on the state of the
global environment, and the governance thereof, frequently provides us with
neologisms and puns to capture an ever-growing interdependence and urgency.
But this volume is much more than a quest for language. It reaches out.
Nicholson and Jinnah steer away from the mantras of the modern ivory tower,
asking what an engaged scholarship looks like in times of extreme human-
caused environmental stress. This challenge unfolds into two cross-cutting
主题. One targets (国际米兰)actions scholars should cultivate to instigate political
and social change, within and beyond their ofﬁces and classrooms. 第二
theme solicits recipes for maintaining hope in the face of environmental decline.
For the literature on global environmental governance, such a normative
and self-reﬂective tour d’horizon by leading scholars is unprecedented, and it
makes reading New Earth Politics an unusual and rewarding experience. 差异-
ference is not only one of content, but also one of form. Owing to Nicholson
and Jinnah’s superb editing, the book’s format mirrors their vision of scholarly
相互作用. 一方面, they asked their authors to write in a conversational
style and to include own experiences. This personal touch, 一个希望, will not
only be of appeal to curious colleagues, but also reach a wider audience.

最为显着地, the editors brought all of the contributors into a continu-
ous dialogue throughout the writing process, which is visible in the pairing of

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130 (西德:129) Book Reviews

chapters into eight complementary couples. The ﬁrst of these twosomes takes
stock of the mess we are in and how we got there. The ensuing seven sections
look ahead and discuss the roles of research, 教学, 机构, civil society,
geopolitics, climate change, and narratives in the New Earth. All are informed
by guiding questions that the editors establish in short introductions to each
部分.

While the pairings are not meant to be perfectly antagonistic, 大部分的
sections exhibit “productive tensions” (p. 12) between skeptical and hopeful
账户. In the ﬁrst section, Ken Conca’s reality check on deeply interwoven
经济的, 社会的, 政治的, and technological problems meets a description of
a dawning green civilization that, as Daniel Deudney and Elizabeth Mendenhall
imply, may just be up to the challenge. 同样地, Michael Maniates cautions
against exaggerated ambitions of teaching hope, while Karen T. Litﬁn offers a
remarkable inventory of contemplative methods through which teachers and
students may support each other’s learning processes. Similar encounters between
critical and optimistic outlooks mark the sections on civil society (Peter Jacques
and Erik Assadourian) and geopolitics (Judith Shapiro and Joyeeta Gupta).

Other pairings instead discuss alternative individual or societal pathways.
In the section on research, Oran R. Young’s outstanding achievements in both
academia and politics encounter Richard Falk’s autobiographical combination
of scholarship and citizenship. In the section on climate change, Navroz K.
Dubash’s calls for multi-objective institutions to manage energy transforma-
系统蒸发散, while Wil Burns and Simon Nicholson, 反过来, draw attention to climate
工程, an emerging technology meant to render these very transforma-
tions unnecessary.

In other sections, the productive tension is at best one of scope and termi-
科学. Kate O’Neill calls for a scholarship that better grasps the evolving insti-
tutional complexities of global environmental governance. Maria Ivanova
largely shares O’Neill’s concerns, while zooming in on the role of the United
Nations Environment Programme at the heart of this intricate landscape. 保罗
Wapner and Peter Dauvergne both celebrate the creative potential of a growth-
skeptical counternarrative, christening it in their contributions either environ-
mentalism or New Earth sustainability.

Of concern, 然而, are the chapters that are not there. Since Nicholson
and Jinnah based their selection on key themes of current scholarship, contri-
butions on businesses and cities would have deserved a place in this volume. A
section on theories and methods would also have been useful. Such a section
could have provided a fruitful controversy between different research schools,
as illustrated by Maniates’ and Litﬁn’s cross-chapter dialogue on teaching ap-
proaches. 还, climate change is the only environmental challenge given the
spotlight of a full section, although the editors rate toxiﬁcation and biodiversity
loss as equally important markers of the Anthropocene. All this said, the volume
never claims to deliver an exhaustive overview or attempts to replace existing
textbooks. 还, the emphasis on climate change is telling, for the good and

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Fariborz Zelli (西德:129) 131

the bad, in that it echoes the dominant theme of global environmental gover-
nance research today.

Sometimes the editors’ normative ambitions turn objectivistic, 例如
when they speak of “doing the right things” and “making the best” (p. 2), or in
Assadourian’s call for “converting the environmental movement into a mission-
ary religious force” (p. 247). Such occasional excursions contrast with the other-
wise dialectic nature of the book, but they do not dampen it.

The interactive layout and great editing make New Earth Politics a role
model for future scholarly debates on the Anthropocene. The new epoch, 作为
Frank Biermann observes in his epilogue, comes with built-in controversies.
New fault lines will produce new winners and losers. The challenge is to leave
triple-win rhetorics behind without getting cynical, and to navigate creatively
within the uncertainties and tensions that are here to stay. For Nicholson and
Jinnah, their very own navigation “was a joy to write and edit” (p. xiii). 什么
better way to keep up hope, as scholars and citizens, in a long and dark age?

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