Land Degradation and Society

Acknowledges that the reasons why land management can fail are extremely varied, and must include a thorough understanding of the changing natural resource base itself, the human response to this, and broader changes in society, of which land managers are a part. Four chapters provide a method of analyzing the problems of management and degradation. They focus particularly on the decision making environment of the land users and managers themselves, its great variety through space and time, and on the inability of single theories to provide satisfactory explanations. Case studies cover Nepal, North America, Indonesia, the Pacific, China, India and historical erosion in Europe, and in modern capitalist, socialist, and developing countries.