Approximately 25 per cent of the world's forested lands are owned or managed by indigenous or community groups (pp. 17, 127, 148). Whether this rate is surprisingly high or low depends on one's point of view. But how the overlapping territories of forests and indigenous peoples or communities are managed in Latin American countries is a compelling problem. One recent governance approach is the forest partnership which has been motivated by ‘combined effects of trends in mainstream development and forest management thinking, shifts in governance, claims for more democracy and the demand for corporate social responsibility’ (p. 18). This context informs the two stated aims of Partnerships in Sustainable Forest Management: to better understand the emergence and dynamics of partnerships in terms of actors, positive and negative consequences, challenges and impediments; and to obtain lessons that might serve to improve forest governance in ways that are ‘pro-poor, socially just, environmentally friendly’ (p. 4). In attempting to synthesise the chapters, Mirjam Ros-Tonen and colleagues advocate a conceptual framework stressing the actors included (and excluded) in the organisations that comprise partnerships, and the lessons relevant to development planners and activists.

Partnerships are defined as ‘formal arrangements between two or more parties from various sectors (government, civil society and/or private sector) around (at least partly) shared goals, in the expectation that each party will gain from the arrangement’ (p. 5). Numerous types of partnerships are possible, depending on the actors involved and the goals. State agencies may join with private firms, or private firms may negotiate directly with communities having access to forests. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) may partner with communities, while the government, firm and community may also form partnerships. Contributors to Partnerships, however, have somewhat varying definitions, and they also use related terms, such as alliance and network. Laura Rival, for example, focuses on forest alliances which she defines as ‘formal and informal interactions between multiple stakeholders aimed at achieving a common goal’ (p. 38).

If ‘partnership’ or ‘alliance’ is defined rather broadly, then ‘forest’ is weakly defined, and certainly not interrogated. James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, in ways recalling their work on west African forest dynamics, criticise the assumption of ecological equilibrium sustaining Trinidad and Tobago's Periodic Block System. Foresters transfer the negative social and economic issues arising from ecological disturbance to woodworker ‘partners’. In a related way, Herwig Cleuren problematises the term ‘forest’ by stressing the ambiguity of bamboo in Ecuador. Is bamboo a grass or a tree? This ambiguity is a key factor in explaining the difficulty of establishing partnerships around the harvesting of bamboo. But, for the other contributors to Partnerships, ‘forest’ or ‘forest product’ is a stable category with a single self-apparent meaning.

Contributions to Partnerships, similar to other edited books on environmental resource governance, pursue various methods and approach their topics by various analytical perspectives. Ethnographic methods, with strong reliance on semi-structured or open-ended interviews and participant observation, support several chapters, and indeed seem well suited to achieving the aims outlined by Ros-Tonen and colleagues. The most compelling case-study chapters use these qualitative methods to reveal various aspects of forest partnerships with special emphasis on ‘lessons learned’. For example, Rival offers a comparative study of USAID-led and company-community partnerships in north-western Ecuador. Critical of both, she stresses the fact that the partnerships bypassed local government and ignored fundamental issues, thus calling into question the stated ‘pro-poor’ emphasis of partnerships. Cleuren analyses ‘possible’ bamboo partnerships in Ecuador, highlighting the importance of intermediaries, although he does not fully develop analysis of an actual partnership between a housing NGO and bamboo producers. Heleen van den Homberg focuses on a debate regarding a failed partnership in Costa Rica. She enriches the content of Partnerships by studying how the company-community partnership was ‘framed’ discursively, but neglects to elaborate on various political and economic issues to which she alludes in the chapter.

Other notable chapters that advance the book's objectives include Carla Marsello and Neil Adger's work on the Kayapó agreement with the Body Shop, and Sergio Rosendo's chapter on extractive reserves in the Brazilian Amazon. The Kayapó-Body Shop deal, which revolved around Brazil nut oil supply for cosmetics, has benefited men more than women, and incomes range widely within the community. Rosendo builds on Margaret Keck's work on extractive reserves in Rondônia state by focusing on capacity building and economic viability. For Rosendo, NGO or donor involvement may create ‘excessive reliance’ (p. 249) to the detriment of organisations representing extractivists.

Partnerships raises several issues, either by omission or by the common themes resonating amongst the contributors. One is the apparent need for a broad-based analysis of partnerships across Latin America, using a common set of socio-economic and environmental variables. The contributors to Partnerships, as one may expect, focus on cases, but one would hope that a more synthetic understanding of partnerships, beyond the framework in the introduction, is also pursued. Moreover, studies that use common variables to compare different partnerships, and studies focusing on the temporal dynamics of partnerships, would increase the strength of arguments on the benefits, drawbacks and ‘lessons learned’ of partnerships. Scholars interested in forest partnerships also might consider the idea that forests present certain biological constraints to the profitability of firms; firm thus seek to reduce risk and increase quality by pursuing strategies that may include partnerships. Partnerships may be instrumental in increasing returns to shareholders because biological characteristics of forests present obstacles to capital accumulation. In addition, a more direct focus on the state as mediator in the relations between firms (or development organisations) and forest communities would strengthen claims made on the importance of an ‘enabling institutional environment’ (p. 29). Finally, students of forest partnerships should question given definitions of ‘forest’ and consider collaborating with ecologists who might encourage greater attention toward the non-equilibrium dynamics of forests. In sum, the vast territories involved, the considerable environmental services provided by forests, and the pressing livelihood issues at stake indicate that forest partnerships represent an important object of study by scholars interested in the meaning and impacts of new forms of environmental governance. Ros-Tonen's Partnerships makes a substantial contribution to this field.