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Rosalind Bailey (ed.), Transforming Children's Lives: the importance of early intervention, Family Policy Studies Centre, 1999, 120 pp., £9.95 pbk.

rights of minorities to land, water and resources. In other words it has a human agenda as well as a biocentric agenda. Environmentalists who adopt ecocentric positions will not be happy with the human welfare perspective adopted by Huby. Her position throughout the book is pretty much what Robyn Eckersley called ‘human welfare ecology’. That is to say, the case for addressing environmental problems is grounded in anthropocentric human utility arguments. This might be expedient in the short term but is not likely to contribute to the wholesale revolution in values and behaviour that will be needed to seriously address ecological problems and instil respect for nature as well as secure a place for the non-human in this world. Some of the more thoughtful environmental philosophers like Tim Hayward have been seeking to reconcile the humanistic and biocentric positions. Huby comes down very clearly on the humanistic of the fence. Within the compass of an introductory book seeking to transcend social and environmental concerns these are complex and difficult issues to address and, understandably perhaps, they are not really taken up. There is, however, a cost attached to this. The anthropocentric values that have contributed to the environmental problems we now face are not really confronted as seriously as they might have been, nor is a reformulated social policy agenda considered as it might have been from an ecocentric perspective. Another criticism that might be raised about this book is that it is not really clear who the readers might be. Is it a text for undergraduate students or postgraduates? This reader felt that it was too densely argued for undergraduates, apart from elective students in their third year maybe. Certainly it would be a welcome addition to the literature for post-graduate students in environmental management programmes and social policy students at post-graduate level. For practitioners there would need to be more case studies of local communities engaged in the LA21 process, both nationally and internationally. There is now a wealth of material post-Rio on which to draw. JOHN FERRIS Centre of Environmental Management, University of Nottingham