History and Future of Plants, Planet and People (eBook)

Alan Hamilton (Author) Alan Hamilton has been a lecturer in botany, geography and environmental science, variously in the UK and Uganda. His research has been mainly on the environmental history of East Africa during the Quaternary, for which he was awarded a Doctorate in Science from the University of Cambridge. He served as Plants Conservation Officer for WWF-International (1989-2004) and as Plants Conservation and Livelihoods Officer for Plantlife International (2005-2008), in which roles he was responsible for many plant conservation projects around the world. He was one of the originators and the overall manager of the People and Plants Initiative (PPI) of WWF, UNESCO and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which aimed to increase global capacity in applied ethnobotany. One of his duties in PPI was to organise publication and distribution of a number of manuals on plant conservation in three languages (English, Spanish and Chinese). He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and remains actively involved in conservation in China. He is the author of eight scientific books and about 100 scientific papers.Pei Shengji (Author) Pei is the father of modern ethnobotany in China, responsible for training and advising many students and researchers on how to work with communities for conservation and rural development. He is an expert on palms and was formerly the Director of Xichuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden.

PART 1. ANALYSIS AND PROPOSAL

1. Sustainable development: an existential challenge of our time
2. Plants in planetary history
3. Plants in human history: acquisition of biological produce
3.1. The big picture
3.2. Earlier times (to 1500 CE)
3.3. Later times (from 1500 CE)
4. Cultural lenses through which plants are perceived
4.1. Worldviews
4.2. Influences of the enlightenment
4.3. Limits to growth
4.4. Environmentalism
5. Knowledge of plants
5.1. Personal and scientific knowledge
5.2. The span of science from blue-sky thinking to routine applications
5.3. Plants and human health
6. Principles of ecosystem-based plant conservation
6.1. Meaning of ecosystem-based plant conservation
6.2. Conservation of plant diversity: a priority in wider perspective
6.3. Value of an ecosystem services framework for analysis and evaluation
6.4. Information and benefit-sharing
6.5. Evidence-based plant conservation
7. Practice of ecosystem-based plant conservation
8. Conclusions

PART 2: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

8. Alan's experiences
9. Pei's experiences