Giving credit where it is due is difficult in any major collaborative project, particularly when the subject matter is the 20-year history of a department of a major international agency. When the effort also involves partnership with another development assistance agency, the number of participants becomes very large.
The perception of the need for a book on regional development planning experience evolved separately in the Department of Regional Development (DRD) of the Economic and Social Secretariat of the Organization of American States and the management staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development/National Park Service (AID/NPS) Project on Expanded Information Base for Environment and Natural Resources. Robert Blesch of DRD and Ken Thelen of NPS first put the two groups in contact, and their mutual interests eventually led to meetings between NPS staff and DRD, which culminated a decision to join forces to produce this book.
Caldwell Hahn and Stephen Bender helped prepare the initial proposal that became the basis for the Cooperative Agreement signed between DRD and NPS. Field research and initial writing of case studies was undertaken by Stephen Bender, Caldwell Hahn, Richard Meganck, and Eugenio Isla. Kathleen Courrier, Arthur Heyman, Newton Cordeiro, and Richard Meganck rewrote the case studies, while additional ideas were introduced by Robert Blesch, Oscar Pretell, Roberto Casañas, Miguel Petit, Arnold Kreisman, Jorge Blanco, Patricio Chellew, and Pedro Bona.
The guidelines were written by Kirk Rodgers, with assistance of a team composed of Newton Cordeiro, Brian Thomson, Richard Saunier, and Arthur Heyman. All senior staff members of DRD contributed in some way to the evolution of the ideas. The whole department and its national counterparts in Latin America and the Caribbean shared in the 20 years of experience that is the basis for what has been written.
Gary Wetterberg, Hugh Bell Muller, and Jeff Tschirley of the National Park Service and Molly Kux of AID reviewed various drafts of the introduction, the case studies, and the guidelines, and contributed valuable comments. Reviewers of the final draft included Marc Carroll, John dark, and Peggy Lipson of NPS; Michael Crosswell, Maria Hatziolas, David Joslyn, and Steven Lintner of AID; Michael Moran of the Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences; Luis Ferrate of the Inter-American Development Bank, and Donald King of the World Bank.
Kathleen Courrier edited the field researchers' reports for the case studies and helped DRD draft the Introduction and the Guidelines. Lawrence Fahey, Gloria Martínez, and Gabriel Gross adapted the maps and graphics from the original OAS reports, which were the focus of the case studies. Teresa Angulo, Janice Bramson, and Mónica Müller took faithful charge of word processing, manuscript production, and logistics while Julio C. Reyes, Linda Starke and Betty Robinson copy edited the finished drafts.
Funding for this project came from the AID/NPS Natural Resources Expanded Information Base Project (which is financed by the Office of Forestry, Environment and Natural Resources of the Bureau for Science and Technology of AID) and from the Department of Regional Development of the OAS.
