Book excerpt: The interconnectedness of the global environment and finiteness of the earth's natural resources require an increased understanding of environmental and natural-resource policy and politics in countries around the world. This is especially true of industrializing countries where widespread ecological disturbances and rapid exploitation of natural resources are taking place. Ecological Policy and Politics in Developing Countries provides an in-depth study of ecological problems, policies, and politics in ten major industrializing countries. Each chapter discusses the increasingly international context of domestic environmental policies and explores some of the powerful interests and institutional forces that contribute to ecological problems and shape the policies to deal with them in each country. The authors identify some of the major impediments to both well-designed environmental policies and their effective implementation. The ten countries included here—the Czech Republic, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Taiwan, Thailand, Slovakia, and Venezuela—cover five continents, over half of the world's population and most of the major industrializing countries. [Contributors include Lester Ross, Robert Cribb, Jonathan Rigg and Philip Stott, Juju Chin-Shou Wang, R. K. Sapru, Stephen P. Mumme, Pablo Gutman, Olusegun Areola, and Catherine Albrecht.]