Future Nature: A Vision for Conservation

Description

The countryside is changing faster than ever. Fifty years of conservation achievements in the UK are now being confronted by a new complexion of economic forces that are driving change in the countryside. At the same time new ideas in conservation are altering the role that conservation is being asked to play in negotiating the transition from past to future. This revised edition of Bill Adams classic work Future Nature tackles the new challenges in the countryside and wildlife conservation head-on through a new Introduction and Postscript with updated arguments about naturalness and our social engagement with nature, and complemented by a new Foreword by Adrian Phillips. Concepts such as biodiversity and sustainability, and changes in our understanding, appreciation and concern for nature, offer unprecedented opportunities. Bill Adams explores the scientific, cultural and economic significance of conservation. He argues that conservation must move beyond the boundaries of parks and reserves to embrace the whole countryside. The importance of conservation for the future is enormous. It holds the potential to create new spaces for nature, both in the landscape and in our lives and imaginations. This factual, beautifully written and thought-provoking book offers a fundamental reassessment of conservation, its importance, and how to achieve it. Published with BANC

Bill Adams is Reader in Conservation and Development at the University of Cambridge, an editor of Decolonizing Nature: strategies for conservation in a post-colonial era (Earthscan, 2002) and the author of Green Development: environment and sustainability in the Third World.

'Adams wants us to begin thinking about nature in the city and of the city as part of nature. Our suburbs no longer separate city from the countryside. This is what we have left. Because half of the planeti? s six billion people now live in cities, we need to focus on making the city livable. Bringing nature into it may be crucial.' Review of Radical Political Economics 'Well documented and beautifully written, there are lessons to be learned from this well-told story.' Marilyn K. Alaimo, garden writer and library volunteer, Chicago Botanic Garden. Current Books on Gardening and Botany, April 2004.