Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America

I've been in business, been involved with ecology and cultural survival and I've traveled in and among the countries and cultures of Latin America for over 25 years. I read this book on a recent trip to Costa Rica and I am so impressed with it that I am purchasing 25 copies and sending them to all of the managers of my mutual funds. How this action fits in with a review on a book concerning the plant's ecology may not be clear to you, but if you read some of the other descriptions of "Trouble in Paradise", then you may understand. For people concerned with the future and with the environment this book provides tremendous relief.

(From Planeta Journal) -- A must read for anyone interested in environmental issues and must read for anyone interested in Latin America, Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America (Routledge, 2003) combines academic research with a regional travelogue.Written by J. Timmons Roberts and Nikki Demetria Thanos, this book reviews the critical issues run the gamut from green to gray.Chapters review pollution havens on the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, the hazards of an urban sprawl and the rise of protests particularly via the Internet. This is no surprise as co-author J. Timmons Roberts is a co-founder of the Environment and Latin America Network (ELAN). Excerpts from Trouble in ParadiseTo become sustainable, Latin America needs real democracy to create the leverage for its citizens to demand a cleaner environment and the services they need to survive. (p. 4)Contact informs strategic advocacy work on one or both sides of the North-South divide. Lives can be changed. The same can be said of academic programs in the region and of linkages between universities and other schools ... Rather than merely observing these issues from afar and wringing our hands, we need to be engaged. Institutions can be changed. (pp. 205-206)Study and travel in Latin America and connections between communities and universities across the North-South divide can create lasting bonds and new directions of change. And we need to call for a drastic rethinking of priorities in international aid and finance. Aid needs to support solutions which address social and environmental problems at the same time. (pp. 210-211)

This is the book we have all been waiting for: a definitive analysis on the state of the environment in Latin America, how it got that way, and --- best of all-- what is and can be done to remedy the crises. Trouble in Paradise offers the coherence, comprehensiveness,and depth sorely lacking in environmental studies about Latin America. Informed by long-term academic as well as political engagement with these issues, Roberts and Thanos make a varied set of long-term environmetal crises and struggles surrounding them come to life for both students and specialists. They trace how common political, economic and social features structure these case studies and thus bring Latin America's environment to the forefront of discussions about globalization.Its readability, price, length (200 pages of reading) and content make this volume excellent for both undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It will get students excited about both Latin America as well as environmental struggles and the inequalities that surround them. The case studies they cover are great jumping off points for imporant related issues such as free trade, inequality, ethnicity, social movements, urbanization and local politics. I will be using it at my desk and in the classroom for years to come!