Book excerpt: 'Marshall has re-grafted economics to the philosophical roots of collaborative environmental management, given stakeholders a pragmatic economics for 'bottom-up' conflict resolution and eliminated the need for 'top-down' economic experts. Beautifully reasoned and wonderfully practical!' RICHARD B. NORGAARD, ENERGY AND RESOURCES PROGRAM, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, US 'If the potential of collaborative management is ever realized, it will owe a debt to this book. It provides a foundational economic theory of learning coming from complex adaptive systems thinking tested with field experience' ALLAN SCHMID, UNIVERSITY DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR, AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY, US 'Marshall argues that mainstream economics, captive as it is of the prisoner's dilemma and the dangers of free-riding, is in a blind alley when it comes to contributing to constructive debate on governance of the commons. This is a significant book, which draws on the new institutional economics to indicate a productive way in which economists could contribute to thinking on common property natural resource management' WARREN MUSGRAVE, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURAL AND RESOURCE ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND, AUSTRALIA 'Economic thought and emerging collaborative environmental governance are important areas of thought and application, but are mostly found at great distance from each other and very often in conflict. Marshall not only clearly demonstrates why this is so, he goes on to detail an alternative pathway that can strengthen both of these fields in both their theory and practice. This is a most impressive feat, and this is a book thoroughly deserving a very wide readership' STEPHEN DOVERS, SENIOR FELLOW, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY 'A valuable contribution to the burgeoning literature on voluntary collective action that demonstrates how processes can be designed to produce trust amongst stakeholders. Marshall anchors theory in the common property resource governance literature that has challenged orthodox economics for the last 25 years and offers the prospect of productive relationships between users, bureaucrats and funders' MARK SPROULE-JONES, V. K. COPPS PROFESSOR, MCMASTER UNIVERSITY, CANADA Mainstream economics has a tight grip on public discourse, yet remains poorly equipped to comprehend the collaborative vision for managing environmental and resource commons. This ground-breaking book diagnoses the weaknesses of mainstream economics in analysing collaborative and other decentralized approaches to environmental management, and presents a unique operational approach to how collaborative environmental governance might be brought to fruition in a variety of contexts, whether in industrialized or developing countries. The result is a powerful, useful and badly needed approach to economics for collaborative environmental management of the commons.