Realizing Community Futures: A Practical Guide to Harnessing Natural Resources

This revolutionary book is a practical guide for helping communities in any location or context - from a fishing community in England to a logging town in Canada to a farming village in India - to develop a collective vision of a prosperous and sustainable future and a road-map for mobilizing and managing their natural resources to realize that future. It explains in a step-by-step manner how to use a process of 'participatory modelling' to structure people's learning, their understanding of the natural systems they depend upon and how this can lead to better social and environmental outcomes.

The book is for communities and professional natural resources managers who want to use this powerful tool to help people share visions of the future they want and to take appropriate, immediate action to turn them into reality. It introduces both the theory and practice of participatory modelling using everyday language and a variety of accessible and successful examples. The result is a practical, useful and accessible guide for practicing real, successful community-based natural resource management anywhere, in any circumstances, for community prosperity.

Jerry Vanclay is Professor of Sustainable Forestry, Southern Cross University, Australia. Ravi Prabhu is Senior Scientist, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Zimbabwe. Fergus Sinclair is Director of Research at the School of the Environment and Natural Resources, University of Wales, Bangor, UK and Visiting Professor at the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica, and Editor-in-Chief of Agroforestry Systems.