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Book Review
| Changing Landscapes: The Development of the International Tropical Timber Organization and Its Influence on Tropical Forest Management. By Duncan Poore. London: Earthscan Publications, 2003. 312 pp. Notes, references, index. $24.95.
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| The International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA) play significant roles in international forestry. This book is an excellent overview of the creation of ITTA and the development of the ITTO. The book is especially valuable because Duncan Poore was present at the creation of each. Years later, he is able to compare what was conceived at the beginning with what has happened. This book, then, provides a unique perspective. |
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The book's scope is broad because its topic is broad. The ITTO has had a varied membership, since it has opened its ranks to NGOs of all sorts since its inception. The ITTO has been an influential forum for discussing forest policy. It has been flexible in setting priorities and fast in translating policy into action. |
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Poore argues that timber shortages, including in tropical regions, arise primarily because of people's attitude toward forests. We need to recognize, Poore argues, that "we are all part of nature" (p.2). The ITTO has been important in helping people find solutions in a variety of types of forests. Approaches, methods, and instruments developed for one type of forest—boreal, temperate, or other—can be adapted to other types. |
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The book's apparatus could provide stronger support for the empire of facts, figures, and examples in the text. The table of contents is mainly a list of official documents. The references are few for a book of almost 300 pages. |
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The book's strengths are the author's insight and writing. Poore transforms bad luck and good, problems and successes, criticisms and praise, into useful lessons. By knowing and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the ITTO, Duncan Poore has made a fundamental contribution to the literature on this important institution. Poore leaves us with an important insight: He proposes to rename this institution the International Tropical Forest Organization because this "would reflect its actual role and its future potential" (p. 258). |
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The book would be interesting to scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and a broader audience. It also could serve as a good sourcebook for thoughtful and responsible readers who are not ecologists or foresters, because it is also about people who want to preserve our Earth for their descendants. |
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It is necessary to mention that the book is printed on nature-friendly, elemental chlorine-free paper. |
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Victor K. Teplyakov is coordinator of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Temperate and Boreal Forest Programme and a professor at Moscow State Forest University, Russia. He is a co-author of A History of Russian Forestry and Its Leaders (Washington State University, 1998). He was a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts and a Bullard Fellow at Harvard University. |
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