Hope and Hard Times

More than a dozen years ago, Ted Bernard travelled to nine communities acrossthe United States to meet residents who were working collaboratively to solvenatural resource conflicts. While there may have been different perspectivesover process, their common goal was to achieve higher levels of sustainabilityas vibrant communities. He visited places as diverse as tiny one-mile-squareMonhegan Island in Maine and cities as large as Chicago and Chattanooga, andwith Jora Young, wrote about their findings in 1997 in The Ecology of Hope.

Now Bernard has caught up with these communities again to discover their progress, and seewhat a difference their collaborative conservation has made in 15 years. Hopeand Hard Times chronicles that journey; the successes, the speed bumps, andthe remarkable tenacity and persistence of the partnerships and initiativesdriving change during exceedingly hard times. Overall, community-basedsustainability initiatives have proved resilient, despite the down-spiralingof the global economy and the looming problems of global climate change. Theirquest points to the need for new perceptions of nature and of humankind, moreguidance from nature, and less consumption and materialism. They offer adviceon how to live on pieces of land without spoiling them.

Offering hopeful roadmaps for other communities working toward a sustainable future, this book will appeal to community activists, natural resource professionals, educators, and environmentalists.