The Purpose of Forests. Follies of Development. 1987. tabs. XIII,343 p. gr8vo. Cloth.

A volume which brings together the principal writings of one of themost important figures in the postwar history of international forestry."After twenty years of working on tropical forestry in thirty countries,I have not come across anyone to match the creative insights of JackWestoby... "The Purpose of Forests" is a book I shall return to many atime, for its wisdom, its wry humour, and above all for the luminouscommon sense of a forester supreme" - Norman Myers. - The book is inthree parts. The seminal paper in the first chapter held out the promisethat forest industries could be mechanisms for development, and the restof the first part elaborates this idea. Part two reveals the author'sgorwing doubts about the consequences of the forestry developmentprojects which were actually being implemented. These doubts ledeventually to his famous denunciation of tropical forest "development"which impoverished the many and enriched the few. This and other papersin the third part look toward an alternative, a forestry orientedtowards people's needs.