Descripción:
Traditional and Modern Natural Resource Management in Latin America identifies a major problem facing developing nations and the countries and sources that fund them: the lack of attention and/or effective strategies available to prevent farmers in underdeveloped and poorly endowed regions from sinking still deeper into poverty while avoiding further degradation of marginal environments. The contributors propose an alliance of scientific knowledge with native skill as the best way to proceed, arguing that folk systems can often provide effective management solutions that are not only locally effective, but which may have the potential for spatial diffusion. While this has been said before, the volume makes one of the best articulated statements of how to implement such an approach.

Moreover, the editors make an eloquent case for the relevance of risk prone areas as a subject of study and the special role that indigenous knowledge plays in such poorly endowed regions. The volume is balanced - it does not advocate one approach over another, and it is multidisciplinary, including work by anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, and natural scientists.

Through carefully considered opinions by experts who have been intimately involved over the long term in theoretical and practical work related to systems of natural resource management in Latin America, Traditional and Modern Natural Resource Management in Latin America addresses a topic that has gained worldwide interest, especially in relation to indigenous knowledge systems.


CONTENTS:

List of Acronyms......ix
Adknowledgments......xi

Introduction, John Frechione......1

Part 1. Characterizing and Conceptualizing the Problem

Capter 1. Rural Poverty Alleviation and Improved Natural Resource Management through Participatory Technology Development in Latin America’s Risk-Prone Areas, Francisco J. Pichon and Jorge E. Urquillas......21

Part 2. Theoretical and Practical Issues

Chapter 2. Rural Development and Indigenous Resources: Toward an Geographic-Based Assessment Framework, Bruce A. Wilcox......75

Chapter 3. Combining Indegenous and Scientific Knowledge to Improve Agriculture and Natural Resource Management in Latin America, Billie R. DeWalt......101

Part 3. Case Studies

Chapter 4. Organizing for Change – Organizing for ModernizationCampesino Federations, Social Enterprise, and Technical Change in Andean and Amazonian Resource Management, Anthony J. Bebbington......125

Chapter 5. Organizing Experimenting Farmers for Participatin in Agricultural Research and Technology Development, Jacqueline A. Ashby, Teresa Gracia, Maria del Pilar Guerrero, Carlos Arturo Quiros, Jose Ignacio Roa, and Jorge Alonso Beltran......157

Chapter 6. Technologies for Sustainable Forest Management in the Northern Zone, Costa Rica, Carlos Reiche......184

Part 4. Indigenous/Local Knowledge Systems

Chapter 7. Indigenous Knowledge for Agricultural Development, D. Michael Warren......197

Chapter 8. Local Knowledge Systems in Latin America: Current Trends and Contributions Toward Sustainable Development, Consuelo Quiroz......212

Chapter 9. Biodiversity and Agroforestry along the Amazon Floodplain, Nigel J.H. Smith......233

Notes......253
Bibliography......267
Index......307