Provides syntheses of studies in three continents on the problem ofachieving and understanding tropical rural development withoutcompromising longer-term sustainability of the soil and watersystems that underpin it.

The studies were carried out in Central/South America, Africa andAsia during the 1990s, mostly through the support of the EU Scienceand Technology for Development Programme. The studies encompassexamples of erosion measurement:; of erosion control andconservation techniques at soil and ecosystem levels; of the limitsto uses of fragile tropical soils; of the effects of runoffcombined with regulation on rivers and reservoirs; of theimportance of indigenous people in the development processes and ofthe value and limitations of modelling at scales from soils tocatchment. There is no single message from the book because thereis no single solution to the problems of achieving sustainabletropical development.

This book presents ideas, techniques and case studies, knowledge ofwhich will help researchers in many scientific and socialdisciplines to understand the complexities better, and politiciansand bureaucrats to understand the consequences of developmentdecisions and learn from the failure of many earlier ones.