Review: Plants are a key part of our lives from food to medicines. Much of the trouble we are having with issues such as biodiversity come down to an imbalance between plant use and ecology. To counter this, an initiative was set up to examine the relationships between plants and people especially in the developing world where pressure on resources is increasing and where the value of plants (in commercial terms) may not be well understood.This book is the end-product of an initiative involving UNESCO, WWF and the royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The aim was to start capacity-building amongst groups in the developing world; using ethnobotany to realise the potential the people had and how to best manage it. The original scheme People and Plants Initiative finished in 2005 but other groups were formed (such as People and Plants International) and other groups e.g. Plantlife International took on part of their expertise. Other books in this series have been reviewed here - this should be seen as the synthesis of the work.

The fundamental point behind this work is that conservation works best with those who have a stake in the projects and who have the local knowledge. Although this might seem obvious to us today the whole thesis has been enough to fuel this 14 year project. We start with an overview on plant conservation perspectives. It becomes very clear that the local scale is the best to achieve success. From this point we look at chapter two which focusses on threats to plants (mainly human) but also developmental. Chapter three outlines the range of actors that can get involved in this work and broadly how they operate. Whoever is involved, information and knowledge are the key items. This idea is expanded in chapter four but the focus is on the indigenous owners: they have the knowledge (often as folk-knowledge but valuable nonetheless) and also the motive to see conservation and a proper rate of return for their work. Chapter five moves on to look at which types of plants (and which parts of those) are the most useful in practical and conservation terms. Chapter six examines how favoured plants are managed - livestock management, agroforestry etc. and the way this impacts upon the ecosystem. If this makes one see plants as a resource then chapter seven opens up the debate far wider to consider the multiple meanings - symbolic as well as economic - that plants have. Chapter 8 starts to look at the conservation angle by considering which areas are best, geographically, to support viable conservation sites. This is followed by chapter 9 which suggests a very careful allocation of resources. If we take these two chapters together we get a very clear message - funds are scarce, research well and consider local first. The notion that the best work is done is highly targeted ways is hard to get away from. Of course, not all areas are equal. Chapter 10 reminds us that ownership is a vital element and that many groups will lose out because they do not have the resources to understand and implement this. Chapters 11 and 12 form a unit looking at in situ conservation. The former looks at some of the pitfalls and how to avoid them whilst the latter focusses heavily on the value of group interaction in the community. In our final two chapters the focus turns to ex-situ conservation as a last resort (ideally, close to the original place) and the value of trade in plant conservation i.e. it will be conserved if it has value (a key point to those with marginal resources).

There is much to admire in this book. As a synthesis it contains all the key parts of earlier texts without some of the detail that tends to hide the main points. It is well written and accessible to all levels making it a good reference text for senior school students. It contains a wealth of data, websites, ideas and practical information that would make it an excellent resource for teachers and students of conservation, development geography, taxonomy etc. Overall, a very good resource that deserves its space on the library shelves.