Hunter-gatherers in a Changing World

This book compiles a collection of case studies analysing drivers of and responses to change amongst contemporary hunter-gatherers. Contemporary hunter-gatherers' livelihoods are examined from perspectives ranging from historical legacy to environmental change, and from changes in national economic, political and legal systems to more broad-scale and universal notions of globalization and acculturation. 

Far from the commonly held romantic view that hunter-gatherers continue to exist as isolated populations living a traditional lifestyle in harmony with the environment, contemporary hunter-gatherers - like many rural communities around the world - face a number of relatively new ecological and social challenges to which they are pressed to adapt. Contemporary hunter-gatherer societies are increasingly and rapidly being affected by Global Changes, related both to biophysical Earth systems (i.e., changes in climate, biodiversity and natural resources, and water availability), and to social systems (i.e. demographic transitions, sedentarisation, integration into the market economy, and all the socio-cultural change that these and other factors trigger).

Aili Pyhälä (PhD in Development Studies, 2004, University of East Anglia) has appointments at both the University of Helsinki and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, working in projects on local environmental knowledge and protected areas, whilst researching cross-cultural concepts of subjective well-being. She is a socio-environmental scientist who is fluent in seven languages and has considerable field-level and international experience.  She has specialised in sustainable natural resource use and hands-on participatory community development. Past assignments have included evaluations in protected area planning and management, ecological surveys, participatory socio-economic work in rural communities, and facilitation and evaluation of development cooperation projects, addressing issues such as sustainable livelihoods, traditional knowledge, indigenous peoples' rights, education, and gender.

In addition to her grassroots-level work with communities and regional institutions in developing countries, she has also gained experience of inter-ministerial working groups and top-level negotiations, through her involvement in various government institutions. In 2005-6, she helped develop Finland's National Sustainable Development Strategy with her work on Sustainable Development indicators. She also spent a period in 2006 consulting, liaising and negotiating with senior government, industry, schools, and other key stakeholders in Victoria, Australia, with regard to Ecological Footprint applications. Similarly, in 2009, she represented the Global Footprint Network in the General Secretariat of the Andean Community, and in 2010 the Global Ecovillage Network at the COP16 Climate Change negotiations in Cancun.

Victoria Reyes-García (PhD in Anthropology, 2001, U. of Florida) is ICREA Research Professor at the Environmental Science and Technology Institute, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her research addresses the benefits generated by local