This book investigates the complex relationship between agricultural sustainability and community resource management within ecologically fragile environments such as mountain regions and dry tropical zones. N. S. Jodha, an expert in rural development and environmental economics, utilizes extensive field data and longitudinal studies to analyze how traditional systems of resource management have historically supported food security. The work presents a critical framework for understanding the decline of these systems under the pressures of modern economic change and environmental degradation.

Experts recognize this work as a foundational text for understanding the intersection of social ecology and rural resource management. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose and the depth of the empirical evidence provided regarding fragile environmental systems.