This is a book about social and environmental decay in African rural landscapes endowed with natural resources. The authors present evidence based research from Cameroon-Chad, Lesotho, Niger Delta, Nigeria, East Congo, Rwanda, Sudan and Ghana to illustrate how the planet, people and profit, so far, has failed to strike a balance and provide rec-ommendations based on findings the way forward. Many of the arguments focus on the local as well rnational political economy in which resources are...

ECOWAS and the Dynamics of Conflict and Peace-building testifies to the fact that we cannot talk of West African affairs, more so of conflict and peace-building, without talking about ECOWAS. For over two decades now, West Africa has remained one of Africa's most conflict-ridden regions. It has been a theatre of some of the most atrocious brutalities in the modern world. It has, nonetheless, witnessed one of the most ambitious internal efforts towards finding regional solutions to conflict...

Forests and trees support sustainable agriculture. They stabilize soils and climate, regulate water flows, give shade and shelter, and provide a habitat for pollinators and the natural predators of agricultural pests. They also contribute to the food security of hundreds of millions of people, for whom they are important sources of food, energy and income. Yet, agriculture remains the major driver of deforestation globally, and agricultural, forestry and land policies are often at odds.

Earth is our Business takes forward the argument of Polly Higgins’ first book, Eradicating Ecocide. This book proposes new Earth law, but it is also about something more than law: it advocates a new form of leadership which places the health and well-being of people and planet first. Polly Higgins shows how law can provide the tools and be a bridge to a new way of doing business. She argues, in fact, that Earth is the business of us all, not the exclusive preserve of the executives of the ...

In this ambitious, challenging, yet superbly readable book, Jean-Francois Rischard first tells us what constitutes a "global" problem and then offers a brief overview of the twenty most important. He finds they all have two things in common: They're getting worse, not better, and the standard strategies for dealing with them, such as international treaties, are woefully inadequate to the task. The chief problem is that in our high-population, fast-moving, globalized and interconnected worl...

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics. In this lecture, Gar Alperovitz starts to formulate a response to the simple yet unnerving question: "what do you want?" He argues that the decay of the labor movement in the United States calls for new forms of progressive politics and systemic change. He offers an overview of the myriad, underreported projects and ownershi...

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics. Gar Alperovitz believes that we are at a turning point in American history, in which systemic economic and environmental issues will be at the forefront of public interest. According to Alperovitz, people are sensing that, in the face of political and economic stagnation, change cannot come from just electing the right person, but fro...

America is in decline, and the rise of the East suggests a bleak future for the world's only superpower -- so goes the conventional wisdom. But what if the traditional measures of national status are no longer as important as they once were? What if America's well-being was assessed according to entirely different factors?In The Upside of Down, Charles Kenny argues that America's so-called decline is only relative to the newfound success of other countries. And there is tr...

This essential text addresses the growing need for a dedicated coursebook for students and teachers of world development. As the source of the most respected international magazine on world development issues, the publishers have created a highly credible and accessible text to illuminate this increasingly important subject.Thematic chapters cover globalization, population, the millennium development goals, and eleven other vital topics. It distils them down to their essentials, ou...

Transnational corporations are one of the most important actors in the global economy, occupying a more powerful position than ever before. In their persistent battle to increase profits, they have increasingly turned to the developing world, a world that holds many attractions for them. But what is their impact on the poor?Now in its second edition, Big Business, Poor Peoples finds that these corporations are damaging the lives of millions of poor people in developing countries. L...

The revised edition of this text includes substantial new material on hunger in the aftermath of the Cold War; global food productioin versus population growth; changing demographics and falling birth rates around the world; the shifting focus of foreign assistance in the new world order; structural adjustment and other budget-slashing policies; trade liberalization and free trade agreements; famine and humanitarian interventions; and the thrid worldization of developed nations.

The book examines trade agreements in the context of the current world economic crisis and the uncompleted World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round of trade negotiations. With economies shrinking and protectionism on the rise, many fear a protracted global recession. This raises important questions as to what role trade agreements – multilateral, plurilateral, and bilateral – should be playing in the current climate of uncertainty, and how best to plan for a more stable economic future. P...