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Contents:

1 - Food fights; 2 - Landscape, parks, wilderness; 3 - Power in the land; 4 - Troubled waters; 5 - Trading with the environment; 6 - Environmental justice and the environmental movement; 7 - Environmental values in environmental decision making; 8 - Making environmental news.

Review:

The Open University has long been known for the quality of its long distance (i.e. book, audio and visual) material. In producing this material for its students it has also opened up this way of working to a far wider audience. For example, this is part of a four-part set (see also Hinchliffe and Morris - the fourth volume is due in August 2003) dealing with the analysis of, understanding of and reaction to environmental events. This, the third volume in the series considers ways in which environments produce conflicting resource demands.

This is not to say that every situation produces conflict rather that there are situations where more than one option appears reasonable. This distinction is made early on in the text and is crucial. At a time when conflicts are escalating there appears to be too little middle ground left. As a result the debate gets polarised and little is achieved. This text aims to unravel the discourse and produce reasoned critique. No environmental issues are simple or easily resolved but they can at least be debated within some sort of framework. We start with a key issue: genetically-modified crops. Of course, all selected crops are genetically modified but what is of concern here are the more recent changes brought about by agribusiness. By way of analysis the work starts with a description of GM and then moves on to a number of arenas where GM was contested: the media, farm trials and public resistance. For each example we are asked what was being contested, what the justification was, the evidence presented, the stakeholders involved and the outcome. Although brief, readers would see this as a framework for analysing the issue. The second chapter tackles an even more difficult case - landscape and beauty. Landscapes have been a part of human thought for millennia. What has changed is our reaction to them: that a working scene one century can be a conserved 'wilderness' in another. The romantic version of Wordsworth takes over from the practical concerns of Townsend and is superseded by the visions of Dower. Same landscape, different perceptions. Whereas chapter one looked at power, chapter two looks at values. What value do we place on an elephant? This might be taken as an economic question but it is also a moral and ethical one. At a time when the moral and ethical stance of global business is under evaluation, such an approach has merit. Chapter three gets us back on to simpler ground - local energy. Two contrasting cases are supplied: wind farms and nuclear power. It's nice to see wind farms are now a mature enough technology to attract criticism. One experimental tower is great but a whole row is something again! This teaches us about the problems of a more environmentally friendly energy system (dilute power needs more room and therefore creates a greater impact). Nuclear power (case two) is the opposite with concentrated power creating political controversy. Part of the problem for nuclear power, in Britain at least, was of its own making. A military programme going public was never going to have the same publicity focus as one going the other way. So, we now have global resistance to nuclear power (and an interesting way of seeing how different local groups tackle the issues). Chapter four moves to the regional scale to look at water. Water supply is a key issue which will only increase in importance but yet it has a varied press exposure. By using some excellent multifaceted examples - Portugal, Okavango and the Middle East, the reader is given insight into how the water issue might develop. By focussing on trade, chapter five takes the key global issue and its main actors including the World Trade Organisation. Using examples as diverse as roses and jeans we are shown how the system operates and the effects it might have. In addition to key global players we also see the impact of different environmental approaches (the environmental movement is obviously very fragmented in its responses and it's nice to see this made so explicit in an introductory text such as this). The remaining three chapters take on themes rather than scales. Chapter six examines the concept of environmental justice using, as its starting point, the 'Love Canal' episode in the US in the 1960s and 70s. Consideration of the notion of justice concludes with the case of Shell and Nigeria in the 1990s. Chapter seven looks at the problems of valuing the environment and the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches. Chapter eight discusses the key area of environmental decision-making - the media and how this affects issues. Examples range from newspapers to the Internet with the advantages and disadvantages of each being highlighted. A final brief conclusion rounds up the book.

Overall this is an excellent text. It covers a crucial area of environmental debate giving the reader both analytical tools to do the job and a series of questions and activities to understand where they are going. Cases have been very carefully chosen to give a diverse range whilst still allowing the course key concepts to be addressed. Given the rising demands of society and an increasing lack of time (and often access to education) to examine these issues this text is a significant addition to the topic of practical environmental analysis. Although it is hard to separate this book from its companion volumes it does stand out as being the most valuable (partly because its subject material is less accessible than for the other texts). This book should be seen as a 'must-buy' for the library and the entire series should be seen on both personal and library shelves if the topic is to be taken seriously.