Book reviews
addressed is the idea of NIABY (not in anyone’s
backyard). This idea is truly telling that most realize
pollution or production or whatever development plan
may be harmful; and possibly no amount of monetary
compensation will due.
The next two chapters discuss the players involved
in distributional conflicts with examples from around
the world illustrating that ‘‘. . .social movements op-
pose dams, pipelines and mines built by states them-
selves or by corporations sponsored by states’’; and
the ecological debt that surmounts from ecological
distribution controversies and how these debts should
be tallied. Martinez-Alier again draws from a plethora
of examples to illustrate the unequal exchange of
sources of resources and sinks of waste.
The final chapter bridges political ecology and
ecological economics. Ecological economics provides
the theory and political ecology fosters the union
between the conflict, social factors, and the groups
with differing interests. This chapter also has a very
helpful section containing the names and definitions
of ecological distribution conflicts. The author states
that the ‘‘hierarchy of needs’’ does apply to all
developing countries—people’s lives depend on clean
air and water and soil, not marketed goods. This book
is incredibly dense with concepts, questions, and
excellent examples. Martinez-Alier enlightens us to
look past the assumption that poor are not concerned
with environmental issues and cites numerous exam-
ples of their struggles and triumphs against multina-
tional corporations.
I enjoyed The Environmentalism of the Poor and
through many examples Martinez-Alier achieved his
objective to inform and educate the reader about
ecological distribution conflicts, environmental
movements, and investigate the relationship between
political ecology and ecological economics. Because
this book is rich with historical and current exam-
ples and principles of ecological economics and
political ecology, I recommend it to professionals,
academics, undergraduates, and graduate students
alike.
Karen Stainbrook
1130 North Wolcott Avenue, Chicago, IL 60622, USA
E-mail address: stainbrook75@hotmail.com
doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.03.004
159
Battling Resistance to Antibiotics and Pesticides:
An Economic Approach
R. Laxminarayan (Editor), Resources for the Future,
2003, ISBN: 1891853511, 400 pp.
The collection of papers edited by Ramanan Lax-
minarayan and called ‘‘Battling Resistance to Anti-
biotics and Pesticides: An Economic Approach’’ is a
timely, fascinating book. Work of this nature has been
long overdue because of the increasing problems
associated with the resistance of pests to pesticides
and virulent bacteria to antibiotics in the last few
decades. The papers in this collection are ground
breaking and for the first time bring together various
approaches that deal with the economic aspects of
resistance including the economic costs of such resis-
tance. Battling resistance to pesticides and antibiotics
is important because they are twin problems affecting
agriculture and the health of humans costing countries
and individuals millions of dollars each year. Such
resistance, if it continues unchecked, could threaten
the survival of humankind. The book reveals that the
magnitude of resistance is large and urgent action is
needed to counteract the twin problems of resistance
of pests to pesticides and bacteria to antibiotics. This
is of utmost importance and economics can play a
vital role in decision-making.
The book has 12 highly interesting chapters with
input from 30 authors and is divided into three parts.
The authors are leading researchers in their own right.
The arguments in the chapters are graphically and
mathematically illustrated. The average reader could
avoid some of the technical material without loss of
continuity. Furthermore, extra analysis and arguments
are provided in the form of commentaries in all three
sections of the book.
Part I focuses attention on issues relating to the
optimal management of resistance to both antibiotics
and pesticides. This section contains four chapters,
three of which are devoted to antibiotics and one to
resistance in pesticides. The first three chapters of this
section deal with issues relating to the management of
resistance to antibiotics. The first chapter focuses
attention on the dynamics of antibiotic use and the
second chapter deals with using antibiotics when
resistance is renewable. The third chapter deals with
the issue of treatment homogeneity for infectious
diseases. The economic and epidemiological argu-
160 Book reviews
ments raised in the three chapters relating to issues
associated with antibiotic resistance are interesting.
These three chapters are followed by two thought
provoking commentaries. The fourth chapter deals
with the issue of optimal refugee strategies for pests
when pests are mobile. The commentary following
highlights the need for direct collaboration between
economists and biologists as this is of paramount
importance.
Part II deals with the impact of resistance to both
antibiotics and pesticides. One chapter deals with the
impact of resistance on antibiotic demand in patients
with ear infections followed by a commentary on
measuring the costs of resistance. The rest of the
chapters (4) deal with the various economic aspects
of resistance to pesticides and related issues and a
lot of attention is given to transgenic crops. Very
interesting and pertinent commentaries follow these
chapters.
Part III addresses incentives and the behavior of
firms producing antibiotics and pesticides. The first
chapter of this section presents an economic model,
which shows the effects of market structures applied
to biotechnology in agriculture. The next two chapters
deal with the economics of biotechnology and indus-
trial organization and institutional considerations in
agricultural pest resistance management. The two
commentaries in this section are extremely interesting.
The first one asks the question ‘‘Does the monopolist
care about pesticide resistance?’’ and the other exam-
ines the strategic issues involved in agricultural pest
resistance management.
The only query I have with the book is that there is
hardly any reference to developing countries, which in
a major way face the issues of resistance related to
pesticides and antibiotics discussed in the book. Per-
haps this omission is due to the lack of participants
from these countries at the conference on the Econom-
ics of Resistance organized by Resources for the
Future from which this book has evolved.
Despite this omission, I strongly recommend this
book. It is a ‘must read’ for all researchers and
students in many fields and is bound to become a
much sought after work on the subject because there
is no collection to match this pioneering research.
The work will no doubt inspire more research and
provide a better understanding of the issues and
complexities involved in the fight against combating
resistance to pesticides and antibiotics. The book has
demonstrated that economics can play a major role
in decision-making processes regarding the resistance
of pests to pesticides and bacteria to antibiotics.
Therefore, this work is not only useful for research-
ers and students but also to policy-makers highlight-
ing the management options available to them in
their decision-making.
Clevo Wilson
School of Economics, The University of Queensland,
Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
E-mail address: clevo.wilson@uq.edu.au
Tel.: +61-7-3365-6645; fax: +61-7-3365-7299
doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.03.005
Stakeholder Incentives in Participatory Forest
Management: A Manual for Economic Analysis
Michael Richards, Jonathan Davies and Gil Yaron,
ITDG Publishing, London, 2003, ISBN: 1853395595,
238 pp.
Participatory Forest Management (PFM) has as-
sumed a profound significance in national and global
environmental debates in recent times. The growing
interest in this field is fuelled by the realization that
stakeholders play a crucial role in development inter-
ventions. Lack of participation is seen as an acute
problem faced by the present day development pro-
grammes in developing countries. The success and the
impact of participatory development interventions
have been questioned by many researchers. In the
meantime, it appears that the analytical frameworks
that integrate the economic analysis into PFM are
scarce in the literature. Against this background, a
manual detailing of the economic principles and
techniques offers readers a useful analytical guide that
explores the economic incentives of PFM.
The manual is comprised of nine chapters and
divided into two parts: the first part (Chapters 1 and
2) deals with economic concepts for participatory
forest management. The second part is comprised of
seven chapters. Chapters 3 – 8 detail ‘Economic Stake-
holder Analysis’ (ESA)—the analytical framework
and its six stages. These chapters present the essence
of the manual. The final chapter provides a summary