Lakes and costal wetlands play a vital role in global ecosystems. They provide a habitat for a wide variety of flora and fauna and help to maintain the life cycle of many species. Lakes and coastal wetlands all over the world are ideal places for human habitation, fisheries, industries, shipping and recreation. Habitat environments of lakes and coastal wetlands are deteriorating due to their exploitative use and improper management. As rapid development and population growth continue in coastal areas, environmental degradation and over-exploitation, the biodiversity and the productivity of these unique ecosystems could be threatened. Lakes and coastal wetlands are transitional areas between dry terrestrial and permanent aquatic ecosystems and are recognised as highly productive. Their importance in socio-economic frontiers has been increasingly felt. Over 200 rivers and lakes in the world are shared by two or more countries. This envisages their international importance. Various efforts are currently underway to develop technologies and systems for successful management of lakes and coastal wetlands both at national and international levels. However, conflicting interests in the use of their resources have led to further worsening of the problems facing lakes and coastal wetlands. Therefore, an earnest attempt has been made in the present book to find ways for restoration, conservation and management of lakes and coastal wetlands.

Molecular approaches have opened new windows on a host of ecological and evolutionary disciplines, ranging from population genetics and behavioral ecology to conservation biology and systematics. Molecular Markers, Natural History and Evolution summarizes the multi-faceted discoveries about organisms in nature that have stemmed from analyses of genetic markers provided by polymorphic proteins and DNAs. The first part of the book introduces rationales for the use of molecular markers, provides a history of molecular phylogenetics, and describes a wide variety of laboratory methods and interpretative tools in the field. The second and major portion of the book provides a cornucopia of biological applications for molecular markers, organized along a scale from micro-evolutionary topics (such as forensics, parentage, kinship, population structure, and intra-specific phylogeny) to macro-evolutionary themes (including species relationships and the deeper phylogenetic structure in the tree of life). Unlike most prior books in molecular evolution, the focus is on organismal natural history and evolution, with the macromolecules being the means rather than the ends of scientific inquiry. Written as an intellectual stimulus for the advanced undergraduate, graduate student, or the practicing biologist desiring a wellspring of research ideas at the interface of molecular and organismal biology, this book presents material in a manner that is both technically straightforward, yet rich with concepts and with empirical examples from the world of nature.

This book was conceived to mark the Silver Jubilee of the British Butterfly Conservation Society. Interest in the conservation of butterflies has increased so rapidly that it is difficult to relate to the situation 25 years ago. Butterflies were on the decline in Britain, Europe and elsewhere but we lacked data on the extent of the decline and the underlying reasons, leaving us unable to implement effective conservation measures. An early recognition of the plight of British butterflies and moths led to the foundation of the society by a small group of conservationists in 1968. Today the society has over 10000 members, owns a number of reserves and sponsors research, conservation and monitoring activities at the local and national level. As part of the Silver Jubilee celebrations an international symposium was held at Keele University in September 1993 entitled 'Ecology and Conservation of Butterflies'. This symposium clearly showed how much important work has been done in recent years and also gave me the impression that the subject had reached a watershed. This was not because the decline of butterflies has stopped or even slowed down, far from it, the threat to our butterflies continues to increase from habitat destruction and intensification of land use. The watershed is in our understanding of the relationship between butterflies and their habitat.

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the United States increasingly has relaxed its regulatory posture in the face of critical challenges to public health and the environment. This is true for regulation of recycling of end-of-life products, including autos and electronic components; potentially hazardous chemicals; and health claims on food labels. Coincidentally, the European Union has gravitated toward more restrictive regulation in these very same areas. How might we explain these diverging regulatory trajectories of the world's two largest market economies in an era of rising public awareness of dangers to the public and the planet? The explanation derives not from cultural differences in willingness to tolerate risk, but rather from distinctive regulatory tradeoffs--between environment and competitiveness in the United States and environment, competitiveness, and integration in the EU.

This book considers how public sector institutions can be transformed to better support sustainable development by exploring the concept of green inside activism and its importance for institutional change. The phenomenon of inside activism has been shown to be crucial for green policy change and this book focuses on public officials as green inside activists, committed to green values and engaged in social movement, acting strategically from inside public administration to change public policy and institutions in line with such value commitment. The book theorizes how green inside activism can contribute to a more sustainable development through institutional change. This theorizing builds on and relates to highly relevant theoretical arguments in the existing literature. The authors also consider the legitimacy of inside activism and how it can be reconciled with democratic ideals. This innovative work will appeal to students and scholars of public policy, political science and environmental politics.

Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures explores how our dominant carbon and nuclear energy assemblages shape conceptions of participation, risk, and in/securities, and how they might be reengineered to deliver justice and democratic participation in transitioning energy systems. Chapters assess the economies, geographies and politics of current and future energy landscapes, exposing how dominant assemblages (composed of technologies, strategies, knowledge and authorities) change our understanding of security and risk, and how they these shared understandings are often enacted uncritically in policy. Contributors address integral relationships across the production and government of material and human energies and the opportunities for sustainable and democratic governance. In addition, the book explores how interest groups advance idealized energy futures and energy imaginaries. The work delves into the role that states, market organizations and civil society play in envisioned energy change. It assesses how risks and security are formulated in relation to economics, politics, ecology, and human health. It concludes by integrating the relationships between alternative energies and governance strategies, including issues of centralization and decentralization, suggesting approaches to engineer democracy into decision-making about energy assemblages.

Advances in Marine Biology, Volume 92 highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters on topics including A Review of Coral Reef Rehabilitation Efforts in the Coral Triangle. Each chapter in this series is written by an international board of authors.

Advances in Agronomy, Volume 176, the latest release in this leading reference on agronomy, contains a variety of updates and highlights new advances in the field. Each chapter is written by an international board of authors.

This interdisciplinary book challenges current approaches to "environmental problems" that perpetuate flawed but deeply embedded cultural beliefs about the role of science and technology in society. The authors elucidate and interrogate a cultural history of solutionism that typifies expectations that science can, should, and will reduce risk to people and property by containing and controlling biophysical phenomena. Using historical analysis, eco-evolutionary principles, and case studies on floods, radioactive waste, and epidemics, the authors show that perceived solutions to "environmental problems" generate new problems, leading to problem-solution cycles of increasing scope and complexity. The authors encourage readers to challenge the ideology of solutionism by considering the potential of language, social action and new paradigms of sustainability to shape management systems. This book will appeal to scholars in multi- and interdisciplinary fields such as Environment Studies, Environmental Science, Environmental Policy, and Science, Technology, and Society Studies.

This professional book examines the concept of engaged leadership. Specifically, it focuses on the need for leaders in personal and professional realms, for-profit and non-profit, to understand the importance of engagement in order to achieve enhanced satisfaction and motivation among stakeholders (including employees, shareholders, investors, supporters, customers, suppliers, the community, competitors, family, and partners), and hence, an augmented level of designed thinking, which leads to increased innovation and on-going leadership development. Divided into three sections-engaged leadership development at the personal level, implementation at the organizational level, and manifestation in practice-this book provides professionals, practitioners and policy makers as well as students with the tools and skills to lead actively and conscientiously and help them understand the importance of creativity and compassion for development. Engaged leadership operates on the fundamental principle that leaders have to first and foremost perceive themselves as leaders, and then engage in design thinking, as they will need to develop strategies to reach, encourage, and positively appeal to these stakeholder groups. Leadership is neither limited to those holding formal managerial position, nor to any particular setting. Leaders can be found everywhere, in all layers of society. Leadership is only possible, however, if one dares to perceive and define oneself as a leader. And only when leadership is adopted as a reality within one's personal perception, can engaged leadership be applied. Featuring contributions from academics, scholars, and professionals from around the world, each providing cases, interactive questions and reflective notes, this book will be of interest to professionals, practitioners, policy makers, students and scholars interested in creative leadership, management, organizational behavior, and governance.

Dating back to the nineteenth-century transplantation of a latex-producing tree from the Amazon to Southeast Asia, rubber production has wrought monumental changes worldwide. During a turbulent Vietnamese past, rubber transcended capitalism and socialism, colonization and decolonization, becoming a key commodity around which life and history have revolved. In this pathbreaking study, Michitake Aso narrates how rubber plantations came to dominate the material and symbolic landscape of Vietnam and its neighbors, structuring the region's environment of conflict and violence. Tracing the stories of agronomists, medical doctors, laborers, and leaders of independence movements, Aso demonstrates how postcolonial socialist visions of agriculture and medicine were informed by their colonial and capitalist predecessors in important ways. As rubber cultivation funded infrastructural improvements and the creation of a skilled labor force, private and state-run plantations became landscapes of oppression, resistance, and modernity. Synthesizing archival material in English, French, and Vietnamese, Aso uses rubber plantations as a lens to examine the entanglements of nature, culture, and politics and demonstrates how the demand for rubber has impacted nearly a century of war and, at best, uneasy peace in Vietnam.

The volume focuses on the ecological functioning of rivers, which has received less attention than functioning of lakes and reservoirs. The selected papers cover a large range of topics relating to aquatic communities, eutrophication, nutrient dynamics and organic pollution, erosion and sediment transport, and fate of micropollutants at the basin scale. Integrated approaches developed in order to study the ecological functioning of fluvial systems perturbed by human activity are presented. This functioning is analysed from the point of view of fundamental research, but insights into system management are not neglected. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of aquatic ecology, river system functioning, and water surface pollution, to postgraduate students, to the institutions involved in water resource management, and to the drinking water and waste water treatment industries. It draws information from many large river systems in the world.

Proceedings of a Workshop held at Stevenage, May 25-26, 1982

During the summer of 1987, a series of discussions I was held at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (nASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, to plan a study of global vegetation change. The work was aimed at promoting the Interna tional Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), sponsored by the International Council of Scientific Unions (lCSU), of which nASA is a member. Our study was designed to provide initial guidance in the choice of approaches, data sets and objectives for constructing global models of the terrestrial biosphere. We hoped to provide substantive and concrete assistance in formulating the working plans of IGBP by involving program planners in the development and application of models which were assembled from available data sets and modeling ap proaches. Recent acceptance of the "nASA model" as the starting point for endeavors of the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems Core Project of the IGBP suggests we were successful in that aim. The objective was implemented by our initiation of a mathematical model of global vegetation, including agriculture, as defined by the forces which control and change vegetation. The model was to illustrate the geographical consequences to vegetation structure and functioning of changing climate and land use, based on plant responses to environmental variables. The completed model was also expected to be useful for examining international environmental policy responses to global change, as well as for studying the validity of IIASA's experimental approaches to environmental policy development.

The Link between Company Environmental & Financial Performance, first published in 1998, is a detailed investigation into the effects of environmental performance - resource efficiency, regulatory compliance, new product and service opportunities - on corporate financial performance. This report makes essential reading for company management, investors and other stakeholders. It demonstrates the quantitative links between environmental and financial performance for the UK's best and worst environmental performers across a range of business sectors. It shows that there is no financial penalty for being environmentally proactive, and confirms US findings that good environmental performance improves a company's financial performance.

This volume challenges global leaders and citizenry to do more in order to resource the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (AfSD) and its 17 interwoven Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Starting from the concept 'we cannot manage what we cannot measure', the book presents some cases showing how to draw national level baselines for the domestication and localisation of the SDGs seeking to provide a clear roadmap towards achieving the 2030 AfSD. Scaling up SDGs Implementation is targeted at the United Nations, national and state governments, sub-national governments, the corporate sector and civil society, including higher education institutes, labour groups, non-governmental organisations and youth movements. The book is cognizant of these institutions' common, but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities within their socio-political, environmental and economic conditions. The book presents case studies of how the corporate sector has been scaling up SDGs implementation, from the tourism sector, insurance, to the aviation and agricultural sectors. To make sure that no one is left behind, the volume includes cases on solutions for pressing environmental and socio-economic problems ranging from cooperatives in Brazil to the conservation of springs in Zimbabwe. The matter of finding synergies between the climate SDG and the Paris Agreement's Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) is elaborated at length. Lastly, the book discusses how institutions of higher education remain critical pillars in SDGs scaling up, with cases of curriculum re-orientation in South Africa to the rolling out of the Women's University in Africa. In this context, this volume challenges every global citizen and organization to invest every effort into making the implementation of the SDGs a success as we welcome the second four to five year segment down the road to the year 2030.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, consist of 572 islands with a land area of 8,249 km2. Their topography is hilly and undulating, with elevations up to 732 m on the Andaman and up to 568 m on the Nicobar Islands. They are known for their rich biodiversity and a very high degree of endemicity in all taxa, especially in plants, reptiles, fishes and corals. Their habitats include bays, mangroves, moist deciduous forests and evergreen forests. Comprising 20 chapters each written by an expert or professional in his/her particular field this book offers new insights into the fascinating faunal communities of these islands and provides the fundamentals for their conservation and environmental management.

The Nature and Dynamics of Forest-Savanna Boundaries addresses many themes and links with a great number of the interest groups concerned with current ecological and environmental research in the humid tropics. It should form part of the reading of all concerned with the fate of tropical forest and savanna regions of the world.

Insect Chemical Ecology provides a comprehensive view of how natural selection acts upon interacting organisms and how particular physical and biological properties of chemical compounds act as constraints upon which natural selection may act. Individual chapters raise specific questions as to the nature of these interactions. The first part contains reviews on antagonistic and mutualistic chemical interactions, the raw materials' of chemical evolution, the economics of offensive and defensive chemicals, and neurobiology. The second part discusses particular problems such as the evolution of resistance, insect pollination, learning, pheromones, sequestration of semiochemicals, the role of microorganisms, sex attractants, the evolution of host races and biotypes, and the role of semiochemicals and the evolution of sociality of insects. The last chapter discusses the role of chemical-based pest management programs in an ecological and evolutionary framework.

In 2020, the world was rocked by the sudden and indiscriminate spread of COVID-19. But for all the damage caused - lives lost, economies roiled and jobs eradicated - it also created opportunities for individuals and businesses to pause and reflect. Bushido Capitalism explores the ways in which this forced interlude has allowed us to reflect on the effects of a Great Acceleration of the last two decades and to critically evaluate where we should go next. Guided by updated values of Bushido, which have long been enshrined in Japanese culture but are rarely referenced in the West, this book presents ways in which we can use this current inflection point to become more responsible, ethical and sustainably minded citizens and business leaders. It underscores the importance of collaboration, humility and realism, but also of confidence, ambition and creativity. It demonstrates that businesses, particularly in a complex and polarized world, can be a force for the common good of society - if run the right way.

In this handbook social science researchers who focus on sustainability present and discuss their findings, including empirical work, case studies, teaching and learning innovations, and applied projects. As such, the book offers a basis for the dissemination of information, ideas and experiences acquired in the execution of research projects, especially initiatives which have influenced behavior, decision-making, or policy. Furthermore, it introduces methodological approaches and projects which aim to offer a better understanding of sustainability across society and economic sectors. This multidisciplinary overview presents the work of researchers from across the spectrum of the social sciences. It stimulates innovative thinking on how social sciences influence sustainable development and vice-versa.

From their largely descriptive beginnings about a half century ago, studies on the ecology of small mammals have mushroomed in number, scope, content and complexity. Yet strangely, or perhaps not so strangely if one considers the extent and complexity of ecological interactions, the main problems for which the early workers sought answers still defy complete analysis, and basic hypotheses remain untested if not even untestable. The same holds true for so many branches of animal ecology that it seems to be the complexity of the concepts that frustrates efforts rather than the subject species. Like all branches of science, small mammal ecology has been subject to a series of fashionable approaches, one following another as tech nology penetrates previously impregnable regions. Doubtless the future development of our science will be punctuated by wave upon wave of new endeavour in whole fields that are perhaps even yet unidentified. Answers to the complex questions which ecologists ask do not come easily. Increasingly though, they arise in direct proportion to the efforts expended upon their elucidation. Many studies have achieved such a high level of elegance, in terms of manpower and apparatus, that there is a feeling that questions asked when such resources are unavailable are not worth asking. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many a complex model has failed fully to explain the phenomenon for which it was construc ted because of a lack of basic field data on the species' natural h story."

International concern in scientific, industrial, and governmental communi ties over traces of xenobiotics in foods and in both abiotic and biotic envi ronments has justified the present triumvirate of specialized publications in and this field: comprehensive reviews, rapidly published research papers progress reports, and archival documentations. These three international publications are integrated and scheduled to provide the coherency essential for nonduplicative and current progress in a field as dynamic and complex as environmental contamination and toxicology. This series is reserved ex clusively for the diversified literature on "toxic" chemicals in our food, our feeds, our homes, recreational and working surroundings, our domestic animals, our wildlife and ourselves. Tremendous efforts worldwide have been mobilized to evaluate the nature, presence, magnitude, fate, and toxi cology of the chemicals loosed upon the earth. Among the sequelae of this broad new emphasis is an undeniable need for an articulated set of authoritative publications, where one can find the latest important world literature produced by these emerging areas of science together with docu mentation of pertinent ancillary legislation. Research directors and legislative or administrative advisers do not have the time to scan the escalating number of technical publications that may contain articles important to current responsibility. Rather, these individu als need the background provided by detailed reviews and the assurance that the latest information is made available to them, all with minimal literature searching.

Heavy metal pollution is a serious threat to living organisms. Industrial development has aggravated multifaceted problems in the environment requiring a comprehensive solution. Appraisal of Metal(loids) in the Ecosystem addresses this need and provides a basic introduction of different heavy metals. Presented in a consistent and comprehensive manner, each chapter highlights the background level, occurrence, speciation, bioavailability, uptake detoxification mechanisms, and management of each metal in polluted soils. It provides the latest up-to-date information about different aspects of As, Hg, Si, Cu, Co, Ni, Mn, Cd, Cr, etc. in single source. This book provides scientists and researchers with the most current source of information on the topic. Written by a global and diverse group of experts, Appraisal of Metal(loids) in the Ecosystem also covers the many field applications associated with phytoremediation and extraction and provides guidance on decision making when selecting advanced techniques.