Kings of the Forest

Kings of the Forest PDF

Author: Jana Fortier

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2009-04-30

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0824863240

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In today’s world hunter-gatherer societies struggle with seemingly insurmountable problems: deforestation and encroachment, language loss, political domination by surrounding communities. Will they manage to survive? This book is about one such society living in the monsoon rainforests of western Nepal: the Raute. Kings of the Forest explores how this elusive ethnic group, the last hunter-gatherers of the Himalayas, maintains its traditional way of life amidst increasing pressure to assimilate. Author Jana Fortier examines Raute social strategies of survival as they roam the lower Himalayas gathering wild yams and hunting monkeys. Hunting is part of a symbiotic relationship with local Hindu farmers, who find their livelihoods threatened by the monkeys’ raids on their crops. Raute hunting helps the Hindus, who consider the monkeys sacred and are reluctant to kill the animals themselves. Fortier explores Raute beliefs about living in the forest and the central importance of foraging in their lives. She discusses Raute identity formation, nomadism, trade relations, and religious beliefs, all of which turn on the foragers’ belief in the moral goodness of their unique way of life. The book concludes with a review of issues that have long been important to anthropologists—among them, biocultural diversity and the shift from an evolutionary focus on the ideal hunter-gatherer to an interest in hunter-gatherer diversity. Kings of the Forest will be welcomed by readers of anthropology, Asian studies, environmental studies, ecology, cultural geography, and ethnic studies. It will also be eagerly read by those who recognize the critical importance of preserving and understanding the connections between biological and cultural diversity.

Forests and People

Forests and People PDF

Author: Thomas Sikor

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-23

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1136342842

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A human rights-based agenda has received significant attention in writings on general development policy, but less so in forestry. Forests and People presents a comprehensive analysis of the rights-based agenda in forestry, connecting it with existing work on tenure reform, governance rights and cultural rights. As the editors note in their introduction, the attention to rights in forestry differs from 'rights-based approaches' in international development and other natural resource fields in three critical ways. First, redistribution is a central demand of activists in forestry but not in other fields. Many forest rights activists call for not only the redirection of forest benefits but also the redistribution of forest tenure to redress historical inequalities. Second, the rights agenda in forestry emerges from numerous grassroots initiatives, setting forest-related human rights apart from approaches that derive legitimacy from transnational human rights norms and are driven by international and national organizations. Third, forest rights activists attend to individual as well as peoples' collective rights whereas approaches in other fields tend to emphasize one or the other set of rights. Forests and People is a timely response to the challenges that remain for advocates as new trends and initiatives, such as market-based governance, REDD, and a rush to biofuels, can sometimes seem at odds with the gains from what has been a two decade expansion of forest peoples' rights. It explores the implications of these forces, and generates new insights on forest governance for scholars and provides strategic guidance for activists.

Himalayan Degradation

Himalayan Degradation PDF

Author: Dhirendra Datt Dangwal

Publisher: Cambridge India

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 8175966319

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Himalayan Degradation, Colonial Forestry and Environmental Change in India questions the recent trend of treating environmental and agrarian concerns as two separate domains. In this aspect, the book goes beyond the existing framework of environmental history that focuses only on the study of state policies and debates over redefining rights and examining protests. The author makes a careful study of the larger rural economy, emphasising the changing significance of pastoralism, trade and foraging in the life of the common people. He links forest degradation and environmental change to socioeconomic transformation. The introduction of 'scientific forestry' in the late nineteenth century transformed forests into a profitable resource for commercial purposes. Forests were overexploited, which resulted in wider ecological changes in the Himalaya . Underlining the centrality of forests and mountain resources to the livelihood and culture of the people of Uttarakhand, the book subjects the notion of sustainable management of forests to close scrutiny. The book will be of interest to historians, environmentalists, policy-makers, social scientists and general readers.

Sustainable Forest Management in the Himalaya

Sustainable Forest Management in the Himalaya PDF

Author: Vishwambhar Prasad Sati

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-01-01

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 3031219368

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume presents a comprehensive description of forests of the Uttarakhand Himalaya. It looks into the major drivers of forest depletion and suggests paths toward sustainable forest management. The book comprises thirteen chapters, which together describe forest land use/cover change; forest classification and working circles; national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and conservation reserves; forest diversity and distribution; forest stocks and products; ecosystem goods and services; environmental index; drivers of forest degradation and conservation; climate change and forests; cultural and economic significance of forests, and sustainable forest management. The text is richly complemented by nearly seventy photographs and figures.

Forest Futures

Forest Futures PDF

Author: Antje Linkenbach

Publisher: Seagull Books

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"Antje Linkenbach persuasively argues that global representation took away narrative control from local actors and removed Chipko from the specificity of its locale, from its village contexts. She attempts to relocate forest issues and struggles by revisiting the perspectives of leading activists and local residents and discusses prominent representations of Chipko in relation to local histories of resistance, local representational contestations, and local forest practices - all set against a backdrop of local reflections on Chipko and its aftermath. It is of ultimate importance that the issues of forest control and sustainable forest use be seen in the context of concerns about social and economic development, regional autonomy, and imaginations of preferred futures among people actually resident in the region." "Built on an impressive edifice of fieldwork, this volume will be of interest for ecologists, environmental historians, social anthropologists, and political scientists."--BOOK JACKET.