This summer, when I was in Bolivia, I was browsing through a shop to find some reading material related to issues of environmental and social injustice in the region. I ended up buying this book and it was the best £10 I've spent all summer.
William Powers worked as a development worker in Bolivia, and lived the typical expat life in La Paz: fancy apartment, socialising with other expats, etc. Then he decides to change his life around, move to the tropical lowlands of Bolivia and work for a grassroots NGO aimed at protecting the jungle and its indigenous inhabitants. He manages to bring together local inhabitants and international corporations, who pay to conserve this part of the Amazon forest in order to absorb harmful greenhouse gases. It is an unlikely alliance between two very different partners in order to stop logging in the Bolivian jungle.
Powers' book is very much a personal account and is as much about his personal relations with the people he meets as it is about local, national and global developments and how they impact the indigenous communities as well as Powers' himself. Furthermore, it is a very interesting read for anyone who is interested in the conservation of nature as well as indigenous cultures, and is currently relevant since land conservation through free market mechanisms are becoming more and more important.
I'd suggest anyone who thinks indigenous communities = good, international corporations = bad, should read Powers' book, since his inspirational story shows that the picture can be far more complicated than that.
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