Chalfan, David

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278 Environmental Conservationbecoming more complex ecologically and more variedtaxonomically. Eventually they emerged as the exception-ally integrated systems which we know today, with areputed two-fifths of all Earth's species in a mere 10% ofEarth's land-surface.This view of tropical forests' palaeoecological pedigreehas now been superseded by the theory of 'creativedisruption' imposed by the climatic fluctuations ofthe late Pleistocene. During arid periods of the last50,000 years or more, tropical forests have been caused todwindle to mere isolated patches—a process that hastriggered the accelerated selection of new species of plantsand animals. During the times of greatest contraction ofthe forests, a few moister localities persisted as 'forestrefugia', serving as reservoirs of plant and animal speciesfrom which the forests were able to re-establish them-selves when wetter conditions returned. These refugiamay well coincide with present-day localities whichcontain a rich diversity of species; certain sectors oftropical forests now feature exceptional concentrations ofspecies, with high levels of endemism.If this analysis is correct, then these forest refugiadeserve high priority in our concern for conservation. Wecan even assert that, if we can protect these forest tracts inthe form of parks and reserves, our efforts will yield amuch greater return per conservation dollar than will theprotection of much larger areas elsewhere.These views and theories have been much debatedduring the 1970s. To review the debate and to collatecurrent findings, and also to draw some action-orientedconclusions for conservation, the US-based Associationfor Tropical Biology called its Fifth InternationalSymposium at La Guaira in Venezuela for early 1979,with the theme of 'The Biological Model of Diver-sification in Tropical LowJand Forests'—which may beexplained more simply as 'Why are species so numerousin tropical lowland forests, and how do they come to bedistributed as they are?'During the course of some 50 papers, the Symposiumlooked for answers in the fields of geomorphology,palaeoclimatology, and evolutionary ecology, amongother subject-areas; and speakers reviewed the tropicswith reference to all major categories of organisms, withsome emphasis on plants, birds, and butterflies.In the event, the theory of Pleistocene refugia emergedfrom the Symposium both scathed and strengthened. Itnow appears likely that, on certain occasions, differentgroups of organisms tended to be concentrated indifferent refugia. There is, however, a sufficient degree ofoverlap for a series of primary refugia to be identified intropical South America. At the same time—and thiscould be a more critical factor—some present-day centresof species diversity do not coincide so closely as had beenthought with the presumed Pleistocene refugia.This implies that conservation planners should notconcentrate too closely on the idea that, if they set asidethe refugia areas in parks and reserves, virtually all will bewell for species stocks throughout the regions in question.(In any case, it could be a dangerous strategy forconservationists so to 'put all their eggs in one basket'—supposing that if they set aside, say, 10% of Amazonia inprotected areas that incorporate Pleistocene refugia andother concentrations of species, they will have con-structed an adequate Ark for the foreseeable future. Thetropical forest cannot be preserved in such simplisticfashion, because the welfare of the 10% will be influencedby the forms of development and/or disruption that areimposed upon the remaining 90%.)The results of the La Guaira Symposium are presentedin this volume, admirably edited by the Director ofBotanical Research at the New York Botanical Garden,Dr Ghillean T. Prance. An opening section deals with therefuge theory in general, then is followed by five sectionsdealing with various categories of taxa. As most of theparticipants in the Symposium were drawn from theAmericas, and the meeting convened on the edge ofAmazonia, it is not surprising that the bulk of the papersfocus on the largest and richest part of the tropical forestbiome. But a section of the book presents four papersdealing with Old World tropics, from the standpoint ofplant communities in general and mammal concen-trations in particular. A final Part presents a 'wrap-up'summation of our present understanding of refugetheory, before taking a moderate-length look at therecommendations to be inferred for conservation strat-egies and programmes.The book is probably too expensive for many in-dividuals to purchase, but this reviewer strongly recom-mends it for libraries and other institutions. It constitutesa first-rate compendium of our knowledge and insightsconcerning a key theory of what makes tropical foreststick—and how we can keep them ticking. And within abroader perspective, of course, the book can be seen as afine contribution to modern biology, both theoretical andapplied.NORMAN MYERSUpper Meadow, Old Road, HeadingtonOxford OX3 9AP, England, UK.Making It Happen: A Positive Guide to the Future, Editorand Project Director JOHN M. RICHARDSON, jr. Forewordby AURELIO PECCI. US Association for the Club of Rome,1735 DeSales Street NW, Washington, DC 20036, USA:232 pp., illustr., 27.6 x 21 x 5 cm, soft cover, US$ 9.95,1982.Any reviewer faced with the task of writing somethingabout Making It Happen must sit firmly on the strongurge to produce a parody beginning something like: 'Hi,yous guys! We're a bunch of really interesting, creativepeople who live in the USA, which is a really great place tobe from, and we're into natural resources and ecology, sowe threw this outsized paperback together for the USAssociation for the Club of Rome and we hope you like ita lot. The articles and the ideas aren't arranged in linearlogical order or any of that dumb old-fashioned stuff, soyou can just kind of feel free to amble through and, youknow, grab an idea here and there...'.Considering the task at hand from a slightly morepositive angle, let it be recorded that underneath all thegraphic and verbal slapstick, editor John M. Richardson,jr, and his many contributors, state quite a few of thosecommonly obvious but infinitely worth-while truths thatmost of us keep on overlooking. People are indeed priorto their ideas; the world as we now find it indisputablyforces us to react rationally to the problems posed by itslimited resources; and it cannot be repeated too often thatopen-minded and therefore teachable people are farbetter equipped psychologically than are others to dealwith contemporary problems.Also, some of the twenty-six contributors to this bookturn out to be fascinating people. My personal favourite isthe Very Reverend John J. Weaver, retired Archdeaconand Ombudsman of the Episcopal Diocese of California,who now serves as a chaplain to the Burlingame,California, Police Department, riding with policemen onhttps:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892900012911Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 12:42:14, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available atReviews & Notices 279patrol several times a week; on his second trip out,Archdeacon Weaver found himself in the middle of ashoot-out in which an armed thief got shot to death lessthan twenty feet (6 m) away from him. Clearly, this manhas the courage of his convictions, has learned and seen agreat deal more than most of us, and marches rathersplendidly to the beat of a different drum.But I have to admit to serious disappointment when Ifound that Archdeacon Weaver's expression of his ideasis a great deal less interesting than he himself is—a trendthat, unfortunately, sets in quite early in this book.Weaver's article recommends putting Biblical ethics intopractice, and he says—quite reasonably and defensibly—that what he calls the ecological imperative is an extensionof Jesus' exhortation to 'love one's neighbour'. Whichleads to: 'The ecological imperative reminds us anew whoour neighbors are. Ecology tells me that my neighbor isthe life that touches my life.... The trees have life. Grasshas life.... The animals have lives.... So all these are myneighbors' (page 35). Nobody can miss the sincerity ofthis passage—not even the most hostile critic; butunfortunately, even the friendliest well-wisher will noticeits banality and the far-too-simplistic thinking in it. Pageafter page of Making It Happen—even the good pages fullof facts and figures and such intellectually challenging (ifvague) notions as 'paradigm shift'—offer little improve-ment in style or tone.And then, of course, there is that pervasive slapstick.As a piece of graphics, this book looks like somebody'sstorage room, with strange shapes teetering on peculiaredges; it confuses both the eye and the mind. And thepages that are not devoted to facts, figures, and display ofthe intellectual tools that are needed to handle life on ourkaleidoscopic planet, are all too frequently taken up withwriting like this drearily egocentric passage from theEditor's recital of how he got to be himself: 'I was engagedfor two years to a lovely, gentle, and rather conventionalwoman. With her, I might have led an ordered, struc-tured, and conventional life. Instead, a very different sortof wife compelled me to confront and alter the male-oriented patriarchal world view I had assumed was"normal"' (page 22) and so on over most of a very largepage. There is also a good deal of boilerplate if effusivepraise of the United States, and how it can Show TheWorld The Way in matters ecological— to the point that,in his forward to this book, Club of Rome co-founderAurelio Peccei drily observes (page 6), 'To foreign ears,the overtones of American self-esteem and pride mayseem implausible at a time when the entire humancommunity... faces unprecedented global crises and aclouded future.'Finally, as the people who worked on this book wouldquite probably say, the bottom line must always beusefulness. Will this book attract the general reader, will itenlist the general reader's sympathy if not his or hercommitment, and will it influence at least some people toact in the various ways which it recommends? Probablynot.In spite of solid virtues that the industrious mighteventually unearth throughout its pages, this volume'sformat, layout, tone, and style, work so industriouslyagainst its proselytizing intentions that I cannot see itholding anyone's attention long enough to create thepositive impression that its makers obviously desired tocreate.Naturally, the sales figures on Making It Happen couldvery well demonstrate that I suffer from a case of terminalPecksniffitis, and since I cannot see myself as fundamen-tally hostile to the intent of the whole project, I hope theydo. But until they do, the kindest thing I can say to theprospective buyer is that it would be better to findsomething else to read.DAVID CHALFAN7 Rue des Lattes1217 Meyrin 1, Switzerland.Petroleum and the Marine Environment—PETROMAR80. GRAHAM & TROTMAN LTD, Bond Street House,14 Clifford Street, London W1X 1RD, England, UK:vi + 788 pp., figs & tables, 29.5x21.5x4.5 cm, stiffpaper cover, roneo produced, £37.50, 1981.This large tome reports the conference held in Monacoin 1980. A somewhat amusing 'Apres vous, Gaston', 'Ahnon, apres vous, Adolphe' sequence of 'opening ad-dresses' and 'opening remarks' by eight speakers (!),clears the way for more worth-while matters. Session 2deals with cost-benefit analyses of environmentalmanagement—surely only of interest to technocrats andthose who have a burning penchant for planning to theNth degree. We are duly impressed by the awesomeamount of paper-work involved, the countless hours ofcommittee work, the endless discussions, pro and contra,of every proposal. Sure enough, planning is necessary intackling the problems at hand of oil accidents at sea, butthis ultra-dissection and superordination seems only toresult in the disappearance of the problems—but onpaper only!The main, and to the scientific fraternity surelythe most interesting, part of the conference wasdevoted to marine petroleum activities in three majorclimatic environments—polar, temperate, and tropic—the 31 papers here forming the real 'meat' of" theproceedings. This Reviewer found the polar papers to beof most interest, all except one being concerned with theCanadian Arctic. Both literally and figuratively, it ischilling to read the paper by J. G. Napoleani & M. Jozanon drilling activities in treacherous marine areas off theLabrador coast—ever-threatened by giant icebergs theyear around, hazards of blizzards, pack-ice, and otherunpleasantnesses of such northerly regions.Equally interesting are conditions encountered in thewestern Beaufort Sea as reported by A. Grantz & D.A.Dinter. Here there are active progradation, Holocenetectonism, frigid temperatures, subsea permafrost, ever-apt-to-be boisterous seas, polar ice-floes—so that it is butnatural that oil recovery is an extremely costly anddangerous effort. E. M. Levy describes petroleum residueconcentrations not only in marine waters but also insurficial bottom sediments. Here, on the continental shelfof northeastern Baffin Island, there are natural seepagesof oil from the sea-bed that are related to foldings andfaultings in a submarine trough, the evidence being gasbubbles and oil-slicks. How long these seepages have beengoing on is not stated (in geological temporal terms?); butevidently to date there is no noticeable impact on theregion as a whole, through what might result when actualdrilling operations get under way is an unknown quantity.Another paper shows how coastal morphology has aninfluence on the impact of an oil-spill. The supertanker'Amoco Cadiz' was wrecked off the Breton coast inMarch 1978, whereupon 233,000 tons of light Arab crudeoil were spilled. Of this amount, 62,000 tons were spreadalong 72 km of coastline, where ten different types ofmorphology can be recognized. Tidal flats were areas ofmost persistent oil-spread, whereas the most rapiddisposal took place on exposed rocky headlands andhttps:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892900012911Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 12:42:14, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at

Book Review: Making It Happen: A Positive Guide to the Future: Making It Happen: A Positive Guide to the Future, Editor and Project Director RichardsonJohn M.Jr. Foreword by Aurelio Pecci. US Association for the Club of Rome, 1735 DeSales Street NW, Washington, DC 20036, USA: 232 pp., illustr., 27.6 × 21 × 5 cm, soft cover, US$ 9.95, 1982

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