LSE Review of Books: Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania and Mexico
Indrani Sigamany July 27, 2017
In an era of free market globalisation, in which environmental conservation and extractive industries take priority over indigenous claims to ancestral lands, Prakash Kashwan’s Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania and Mexico is an opportune and timely book for scholars studying the social justice aspects of nature conservation within democratic contexts.

Democracy in the Woods is a powerful portrayal of the complexities of governance and justice contained in the issues of land displacement and environmental conservation, which can both contribute to widening livelihood and habitat insecurity. The trespassing on human rights creates an urgency to the debates explored in this book. Institutions reflect the dynamics in a society, and Kashwan argues that unequal access to natural resources, social justice and environmental power presents ‘a set of interconnected social dilemmas of the grandest scale’, here embodied in forest rights and the rationale for forest protection.
