India's forests are rapidly deteriorating. This thought-provoking book explores the relationship between ecology, environment and the sustainable use of natural resources in the course of economic development. "The book by Nadkarni and his colleagues makes an important contribution to this literature....Although this study was done in India, the three main actors identified in the struggle of the use of forest resources and their responses to pressures from other actors, and also to technical changes in the larger national and global economy, provide an important framework in which to examine deforestation in other parts of the world....this book provides interesting and stimulating ideas." --Global Environmental Change