The Construction of a Global Issue

See Lamont C. Hampel, Environmental Governance, The Global Challenge, Washington, Island Press, 1996.Google Scholar

“Transcoding first involves pulling together scattered pieces of information and treating them as a whole; it also means translating this information into a different register with different rationales, to ensure its dissemination within the social field and outside of it,” p. 22 in: Pierre Lascoumes, L’éco-pouvoir, Paris, La Découverte, 1994. The author likens his idea of“transcoding” to that of “translation” used by Michel Callon, “in that this process relates to an activity that produces meaning via transactions between distinct, even unrelated perspectives,” Idem., p. 24.Google Scholar

Michel Callon, “Eléments pour une sociologie de la traduction,” Année sociologique, XXXVI, 1984, p. 169 ff.Google Scholar

See John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, New York, Little, Brown and Co, 1984.Google Scholar

One of the first to report deforestation in the Amazon is William Denevan, “Development and the Imminent Demise of the Amazon Rain Forest,” The Professional Geographer, 25 (2), May 1973, pp. 130–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Adrian Sommer, “Attempt at an assessment of the world’s tropical forests,” Unasylva, 28, (112–113), 1976, pp. 5–25.Google Scholar

See in particular Alan Grainger, Controlling Tropical Deforestation, Earthscan, London, 1993, p. 127.Google Scholar

Greenpeace, Facing Destruction:A Greenpeace briefing on the timber industry in the Brazilian Amazon, Amsterdam, Greenpeace International Publications, May 1999.Google Scholar

N. Myers, Conversion of Tropical Moist Forests, Washington, D.C., National Research Council, 1980;Google Scholar

J. P. Lanly (ed.), Tropical Forest Resources Assessment Projects (GEMS): Tropical Africa, Tropical Asia, Tropical America (4 vol.), FAO/UNEP, Rome, 1981.Google Scholar

N. Myers, Deforestation Rates in Tropical Forests and Their Climate Implications, London, Friends of the Earth, 1989.Google Scholar

For a well-documented narrative of the institutional genesis of the TFAP see David Humphreys, Forest Politics, The Evolution of International Cooperation, London, Earthscan, 1996.Google Scholar

On this evolutionist theory in the spirit of Walt Rostow, see Gilbert Rist, Le développement, histoire d’une croyance occidentale,” Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 1996, p. 153 ff.Google Scholar

Ola Ullsten, Salleh Mohammed Nor, Montgue Yudelman, Tropical Forestry Action Plan: Report of the Independent Review, RAO, Kuala Lumpur, May 1990.Google Scholar

The two other reports came from the World Rain Forest Movement: Marcus Colchester and Larry Lohmann, The Tropical Forestry Action Plan: What Progress?, World Rain Forest Movement, The Ecologist, 1990 and the WRI:Google Scholar

R. Winterbottom, Taking Stock: The Tropical Forestry Action Plan after Five Years, WRI, Washington, June 1990.Google Scholar

On these various episodes and the restructuring of the TFAP, see David Humphreys’ very thorough study, Forest Politics, op. cit., p. 44 ff. See also Jean Clément’s testimony, “Le développement de la pensée et des actions forestières tropicales depuis 1946,” Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 252, 2nd quarter, 1997.Google Scholar

See the introduction to Chico Mendes’s last interviews, Mon combat pour la forêt, presented by the Bureau d’Amérique latine and Gilles Perrault, Paris, Seuil, 1990 and the report by New Yorker writer/journalist Alex Shoumatoff, The World is Burning, Morrow/Avon, 1991. The most authoritative work on Chico Mendes’s political battle is a very thorough study by Andrew Revkin, The Burning Season:The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1990.Google Scholar

On these points see the references and the work of Luiz C. Barbosa, The Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. Global Ecopolitics, Development and Democracy, Lanham, Oxford, University Press of America 2000, as well as the fine book by anthropologist and filmmakerGoogle Scholar

Geoffrey O’Connor, Amazon Journal, New York, Penguin, 1997.Google Scholar

See Serge Bahuchet (dir.), The Situation of Indigenous People in Tropical Forests, European Commission, Luxembourg, Office of Official Publications, 1994.Google Scholar

She quotes Bahuchet’s estimates: 145,359 Amerindians in the Brazilian Amazon, 80,000 in the Colombian Amazon; in the Philippines 79,000 hunter-gatherers for 14 ethnic groups and 1,490,724 swidden cultivators for 38 ethnic groups; in Sumatra, Indonesia 46,100 hunter-gatherers for seven ethnic groups, 2,225,000 slash-and-burner farmers for five ethnic groups. In Cameroon, the population is 1,424,000 and 22,127,000 in ex-Zaire. Claudine Friedberg, “Forêts tropicales et populations forestières: quelques repères,” Nature-Sciences-Sociétés, 1996, 4 (2), pp. 157–158.Google Scholar

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Janine Delaunay, Halte d la croissance? Enquête sur le Club de Rome, Paris, Fayard, 1972. The report was hotly disputed and has turned out to be wrong on a number of counts. It nevertheless caused a considerable stir at a time when the first oil crisis and tension surrounding raw materials lent credence to the notion of an upcoming shortage.Google Scholar

Alfred Sauvy, L’Europe submergée: Sud-Nord dans 30 ans, Paris, Dunod, 1987.Google Scholar

See Marie-Claude Smouts, “Risque planétaire et sécurité environnementale,” Esprit, May 2001, pp. 133–141.Google Scholar

The notion of biosphere was coined by the great Russian scientist VladimirVernadsky, who distinguished it from the geosphere (where the chemical elements of the earth’s envelop circulate) and the noosphere (the sphere of human consciousness). See Vladimir Vernadsky, La biosphère, Paris, Félix Alcan, 1929.Google Scholar

For a clear introduction to the definition used by contemporary ecologists, see François Ramade, Le grand massacre; l’avenir des espèces vivantes, Paris, Hachette, 1999.Google Scholar

See John McCormick, The Global Environmental Movement, London, Belhaven Press, 1989, p. 34ff.Google Scholar

Timothy Swanson, “Why is there a biodiversity convention? The international interest in centralized development planning,” International Affairs, 75 (2), 1999, pp. 307–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Jeff Sayer, Natarajann Ishwaran, James Thorsell, and Todd Sigaty, “The World Heritage Convention as a mechanism for conserving tropical forest biodiversity,” CIFOR, 2000, Ambio, 29 (6), September 2000, pp. 302–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

John Lanchbery gives some clues as to unraveling them in “Long-Term Trends in Systems for Implementation Review in International Agreements on Fauna and Flora,” in David Victor, Kal Kaustalia, and Eugene B. Skolnikoff, The Implementation and Effectiveness of International Environmental Commitments:Theory and Practice, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 1998, pp. 57–87.Google Scholar

See John Mayhew, ITTO, Tropical Timber Update, 2, 1997, S. Tillier, “Le mahogany grandes feuilles en Martinique,” Bois et forêts des tropiques, 244 (2), pp. 55–66.Google Scholar

Ideas inspired by J. Rondeux’s study, “Inventaires forestiers et biodiversité,” Unasylva, 50 (196), 1999, pp. 35–41.Google Scholar

Peter H. Freeman and Robert Fox, Satellite Mapping of Tropical Forest Cover and Deforestation: A review with recommendations for USAID, 1994, http://www.ciesin.org/docs/005–325/005–325.html.Google Scholar