Introduction

This volume deals with the threat of environmental degradation in the Third World, and with the wide range of actions people take on the local level to manage and protect their natural resources – activities which have the potential to help reverse, arrest or prevent environmental decline. When such actions are undertaken they stem primarily from a concern with livelihood: with people’s desire to maintain or improve levels of living which, in much of the Third World, depend to a large extent on the ability to make productive use of natural resources. The book is thus concerned with what has come to be known as ‘sustainable development’.