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Robert S. Anderson, Richard Grove and Karis Hiebert, eds., Islands, Forests and Gardens in the Caribbean: Conservation and Conflict in Environmental History. London: Macmillan Caribbean (Warwick University Caribbean Studies), 2006, xxii + 266 pp.
The conference in 1991 celebrating the bicentenary of the St Vincent Botanical Garden inspired this collection of essays edited by Robert S. Anderson, Richard Grove and Karis Hiebert. The contributors deal with the historic struggle to preserve the ecological abundance and diversity in the Caribbean through an analysis and chronological survey of environmental institutions - botanical gardens and forest conservation, whose founders have a "direct linkage" with the Caribbean, according to the various authors. The connection between botanical gardens and forest reserves is perhaps more apparent than real, which may be a weakness of the collection. The development of botanical gardens over more than two centuries is clearer to follow for the general interest reader, whereas the specialist may see a better structure holding them together with conservation. Arguably, the functions of a botanical garden include the conservation of indigenous and alien plants, but its various aims are more complex and diffuse than simply conservation.
The first two essays neatly contrast the exploitation methods of the Caribs in Dominica with those of the British sugar planters in Barbados. The former's small subsistence patches or "gardens" transformed without destroying the landscape, while the latter replaced the forest with sugar cane, leading to soil erosion, lower yields and uncertain rainfall within two or three decades of their arrival.
The next four essays explore the concept of botanical...