The loss of the world's biodiversity is generally accepted as being greater than ever before largely due to human activities. There are now major international organizations that address this issue and on a national scale concrete activities include the design, initiation and management of protected areas. Protecting biodiversity by way of reversing ecosystem degradation at the same time as accommodating ecosystem service demands can probably only be achieved by significant changes in policies, institutions and practices, perhaps requiring radical changes in the governance of biodiversity. The issue of governance is what this book primarily addresses by way of a literature review, but it will not in any way provide readers with a satisfactory review of biodiversity, agricultural biodiversity, the assessment of monetary value of such diversity in terms of ecosystems services or even the likely effects of current climate change on the survival of biodiversity.

There are three valuable case studies that make up three chapters out of the eleven. These focus on wildlife conservation in India, wildlife and forestry national parks in Tanzania and protected area management particularly of agro-biodiversity (the Andean Potato Park) in Peru. The final three chapters deal with conclusions and ways forward in terms of governance. The overall message seems to be that conservation of biodiversity needs to be ‘governed’ more by bottom-up strategies than the more traditional top-down approaches. But if climate change is one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss, how can this be achieved by any other means than actions taken by governments worldwide?