What would you get if you combined an entrepreneur, a technologist, a financier, and a strategist/ecologist with an international chef, corporate lawyer, architect, and more? One such international leadership team created a new model of eco-development (economic and ecological) and introduced it with an array of on-the-ground programs into a village on the edge of one of India’s original nine Project Tiger nature reserves. This book presents the story of this remarkable center. It argues that to save an endangered species, you have to save its environment, and to save those, you must "save" the people that live with them, by providing eco-sensitive ways to grow economically, without encroaching on the natural environment or helping poachers. This "Golden Triangle" model is put forth in this book that includes eco-development facts and figures, engaging "how-it-happened" vignettes, insights and lessons learned, and results – including a four-times increase in tiger numbers, generation of new base-of-pyramid businesses, fierce eco-protectiveness by local people, eager adoption of eco-technologies, and economic and social betterment. Scalable implications are provided for economic and ecological development worldwide.
