Product Description

This gripping portrait of environmental politics chronicles the devastating destruction of the Philippine countryside and reveals how ordinary men and women are fighting back. Traveling through a land of lush rainforests, the authors have recorded the experiences of the people whose livelihoods are disappearing along with their country's natural resources. The result is an inspiring, informative account of how peasants, fishers, and other laborers have united to halt the plunder and to improve their lives.
These people do not debate global warming--they know that their very lives depend on the land and oceans, so they block logging trucks, protest open-pit mining, and replant trees. In a country where nearly two-thirds of the children are impoverished, the reclaiming of natural resources is offering young people hope for a future. Plundering Paradise is essential reading for anyone interested in development, the global environment, and political life in the Third World.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #766481 in Books
• Published on: 1994-08-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 226 pages

From Library Journal
Broad (international development, American Univ.) and Cavanagh, a policy analyst, have produced a book that combines the close observations and engaging style of a good travel narrative with an analysis grounded in a deep knowledge of the Philippines. Their work gives voice to that country's poor people as they seek to reclaim the natural resources that have been exploited by a small national elite and multinational businesses and to partake in the decision about the future use of those resources. Few books chronicle the struggles of common citizens to protect the environment that supports their livelihood. This one does so extremely well and is recommended to both public and academic libraries.
- Bill Rau, Takoma Park, Md.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Harry E. Demarest, San Francisco Chronicle Review
"Broad and Cavanagh have found, in perhaps the most unexpected corner of the planet, a hopeful story and a challenge to certain conventional environmental wisdom."

Megan Ryan, World Watch Magazine, Worldwatch Institute
"A chronicle of short-term gain for the few, and long-term decline for the many. But it is also at times a story of hope, of how the people most immediately threatened by the loss of their trees, fish, and farmland are fighting back."