By probing deeply into a crucial environmental problem, Peppard succeeds in opening up other interlaced and contested environmental debates in global agriculture, climate change, and energy use as well as complex ethical questions about human rights, economics and gender issues. Woven into this account, we find critical theological threads emerging from liberation theology and Roman Catholic social teaching as well as humility about humanity's place in the world, while affirming insights emerging from the natural science. This aporoach serves to make complex environmental issues more accessible to the reader, more manageable, and therefore provides concrete basis for specific action. This book is good for students and researchers alike.