Sarah Milne

In 2012, Cambodia’s most prominent environmental activist was brutally murdered in a high-profile conservation area in the Cardamom Mountains. Tragic and terrible, this event magnifies a crisis in humanity’s efforts to save nature: failure of the very tools and systems at hand for advancing global environmental action. Sarah Milne spent more than a decade working for and observing global conservation projects in Cambodia. During this time, she saw how big environmental NGOs can operate rather like corporations. Their core practice involves rolling out appealing and deceptively simple policy ideas, like Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES). Yet, as policy ideas prove hard to implement, NGOs must also carefully curate evidence from the field to give the impression of success and effectiveness. In Corporate Nature, Milne delves inside the black box of mainstream global conservation. She reveals how big international NGOs struggle in the face of complexity—especially in settings where corruption and political violence prevail. She uses the case of Conservation International’s work in Cambodia to illustrate how apparently powerful NGOs can stumble in practice: policy ideas are transformed on the ground, while perverse side effects arise, like augmented authoritarian power, illegal logging, and Indigenous dispossession. The real power of global conservation NGOs is therefore not in their capacity to control what happens in the field but in their capacity to ignore or conceal failings. Milne argues that this produces an undesirable form of socionature, called corporate nature, that values organizational success over diverse knowledges and ethical conduct.

An Insider's Ethnography of Global Conservation

Corporate Nature

“Brings literature lovers on a journey through London, from Chaucer in the fourteenth century to present day . . . as diverse as the city itself.” —British Heritage Travel Many of the greatest names in literature have visited or made their home in the colorful and diverse metropolis of London. From Charles Dickens to George Orwell, Virginia Woolf to Bernadine Evaristo, London’s writers have brought the city to life through some of the best known and loved stories and characters in fiction. This book takes you on an area-by-area journey through London to discover the stories behind the stories told in some of the most famous novels, plays, and poems written in, or about, the city. Find out which poet almost lost one of his most important manuscripts in a Soho pub. Discover how Graham Greene managed to survive the German bomb that destroyed his Clapham home. Climb down the dingy steps from London Bridge to the Thames Path below and imagine how it felt to be Nancy trying to save Oliver Twist, only to then meet her own violent death. Drink in the same pub where Bram Stoker listened to the ghost stories that inspired Dracula, the plush drinking house where Noel Coward performed, and the bars and cafes frequented by modern writers. Tour the locations where London’s writers, and their characters lived, worked, played, loved, lost, and died. This is the first literature guide to London to be fully illustrated throughout with beautiful color photographs. It can be used as a guidebook on a physical journey through London, or as a treasury of fascinating, often obscure tales and information for book lovers to read wherever they are.

The Book Lover's Guide to London

"When Lily's Mum tells her that she wishes she could build a bridge between their two homes, Lily and her dog, Woof, swap stick hunts for bridge hunts and set off in search of a bridge to Australia. This is a charming and whimsical tale of a little girl, her furry best friend and a big imagination. Kiwis and Koalas is a beautifully illustrated story that will take you on a magical journey around Australia and New Zealand, stopping to sightsee along the way."--Publisher.

Kiwis and Koalas

Horses, hounds, risk-taking, adrenaline, the great outdoors and camaraderie are all part of the allure of hunting. In The Thrill of the Chase: celebrating hunting with harrier hounds in New Zealand, evocative photographs capture the essence of this dynamic sport. Equestrian journalist and hunting enthusiast Sarah Milne and award-winning photographer Rob Tucker have travelled the country recording all facets of the hunting season. Separate chapters outline the roles of key participants, including the Master, huntsman and whipper-in. Other chapters provide an insight into breeding, assessing and preparing hounds for hunting. Several of New Zealand's most recognised hunting identities, including 95-year-old Bessie Fullerton-Smith, Patroness of the New Zealand Hunts' Association are profiled and give their personal insights into the unique qualities of hunting in this country. As many paddocks in New Zealand are enclosed by post and wire fences, jumping wire presents a significant difference from hunting in either England or the USA. Although visitors initially find this challenging, it is an accepted part of the sport here. In the diverse New Zealand landscape, hunting can involve negotiating large fences (often wire), riding through streams or on the beach and around swamps and areas of bush. From Northland's coast-to-coast hunting, to rolling green Waikato farms, the big gorse hedges of Canterbury and expansive tussock lands of Central Otago, Rob Tucker's photographs record many of the hunts in action. Mount Taranaki, the mountains of the Central Plateau and the wide vistas of Hawkes Bay all provide wonderful backdrops for horses and hounds enjoying a day's hunting. Many good competition horses have started their careers in the hunting field and several New Zealand event riders have enjoyed the sport, including Mark Todd who comments in his foreword on 'the excitement of crossing fantastic country at speed and the challenge of jumping whatever comes in front of you.' One hundred and forty stunning photographs capture the action, fun and magnificent scenery that makes hunting in New Zealand such a special sport. Sarah Milne has been passionate about hunting since she first participated in the sport 26 years ago. It combines her love of horses and the New Zealand countryside with the challenge of following hounds. Sarah is an amateur whipper-in for the Waikato hunt and lives in Cambridge with her husband and two sons. She writes regularly for equestrian publications both here and internationally. Rob Tucker has been taking photographs for 36 years including four America's Cup regattas as Team New Zealand's in-house photographer, private work for Queen Elizabeth II, fashion photography with Elle McPherson and two front covers for Time International. Rob is based in New Plymouth.

Celebrating Hunting with Harrier Hounds in New Zealand

The Thrill of the Chase

Sango Mahanty

Written by leading authorities from Australasia, Europe and North America, this book examines the dynamic conflicts and synergies between nature conservation and human development in contemporary Cambodia. After suffering conflict and stagnation in the late twentieth century, Cambodia has experienced an economic transformation in the last decade, with growth averaging almost ten per cent per year, partly through investment from China. However this rush for development has been coupled with tremendous social and environmental change which, although positive in some aspects, has led to rising inequality and profound shifts in the condition, ownership and management of natural resources. High deforestation rates, declining fish stocks, biodiversity loss, and alienation of indigenous and rural people from their land and traditional livelihoods are now matters of increasing local and international concern. The book explores the social and political dimensions of these environmental changes in Cambodia, and of efforts to intervene in and ‘improve’ current trajectories for conservation and development. It provides a compelling analysis of the connections between nature, state and society, pointing to the key role of grassroots and non-state actors in shaping Cambodia’s frontiers of change. These insights will be of great interest to scholars of Southeast Asia and environment-development issues in general.

Exploring frontiers of change in nature, state and society

Conservation and Development in Cambodia

Colas Chervier

This paper presents a broad overview of payments for environmental services (PES) experiences in Cambodia. First, we explore the legal and policy environment for PES, including its promotion by international donors and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and its uptake by government actors. This reveals a long-standing uncertainty over whether the government is willing to support PES, and a lack of clarity about what PES actually represents in practice. Second, taking a broad definition of PES, we examine the full range of payments-based schemes for conservation currently operating in Cambodia. These include community-based conservation agreements, direct payments for biodiversity conservation, PES schemes in the context of hydropower, and REDD+ schemes in the context of climate change mitigation. Overall, these payment schemes demonstrate mixed environmental and social effects; and they face a range of technical and practical challenges, relating to the governance context of Cambodia and difficulties in securing any ‘willingness to pay’ for environmental services beyond donor-funded schemes. More profoundly, these findings illustrate that ‘environmental services markets’ do not naturally come into being; but instead require a lot of political and discursive work, institution-building, and donor funding to become established. For this reason, we see PES succeeding only in isolated cases, with dedicated NGO-backing and the presence of niche markets. Beyond that, we observe significant challenges for PES and REDD+ in Cambodia, relating mainly to the apparent ‘state capture’ of these mechanisms. Such an outcome risks the erosion of conservation and local livelihood objectives that international donors and buyers of environmental services are seeking. It also presents the ethical problem of PES and REDD+ being absorbed into the Cambodian regime simply as adjuncts to the status quo.

A Review of payments for environmental services (PES) experiences in Cambodia

Kitty Kat is on her way to the Primrose Park for a picnic when she finds a hat at the gate. She takes it upon herself to find the owner of the hat and embarks on an adventure that will take her far and wide. Kitty Kat meets the elegant Mr Swan and the Hip Hopping Mr Frog before taking a boat ride across the lake. Then she meets the famous Primrose Marching Band, dancing and singing all the way around the park until she at last meets the owner of the lost hat. This enchanting story of The Lost Hat will have you and your child dancing and singing all day. After Sarah Milne wrote The Lost Hat, creating the characters, movement and songs, she was inundated with special requests by her students and parents to write more stories. Sarah wrote her second book and due to the success and continued requests she is now writing her eighth story. The Kitty Katz Club is full of uplifting, enchanting stories, songs and dances about friendship, bravery, team building, confidence and helping one another.

Sarah Milne

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