Indigenous knowledge has become a catchphrase in global struggles for environmental justice. Yet indigenous knowledges are often viewed, incorrectly, as pure and primordial cultural artifacts. This collection draws from African and North American cases to argue that the forms of knowledge identified as "indigenous" resulted from strategies to control environmental resources during and after colonial encounters.
At times indigenous knowledges represented a "middle ground" of intellectual exchanges between colonizers and colonized; elsewhere, indigenous knowledges were defined through conflict and struggle. The authors demonstrate how people claimed that their hybrid forms of knowledge were communal, religious, and traditional, as opposed to individualist, secular, and scientific, which they associated with European colonialism.
"Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment" offers comparative and transnational insights that disturb romantic views of unchanging indigenous knowledges in harmony with the environment. The result is a book that informs and complicates how indigenous knowledges can and should relate to environmental policy-making.
Contributors: David Bernstein, Derick Fay, Andrew H. Fisher, Karen Flint, David M. Gordon, Paul Kelton, Shepard Krech III, Joshua Reid, Parker Shipton, Lance van Sittert, Jacob Tropp, James L. A. Webb, Jr., Marsha Weisiger

Old men used to sit in corner stores and discuss business, work, and politics. Women used to come together and talk about the men as they took care of the home and children, or even more recently as a part of the workforce. Today, however, politics is a shunned topic, and conversation is all but dead. It is difficult to stay informed and talk with each other about life and politics.

It is even more difficult to stay informed on a technical topic such as energy and something as double-sided as politics. Yet it is imperative that people stay informed and well-connected to direct their government.

This book shows how the government (President, House and Senate, left and right) have destroyed the energy industry, taxed the middle class, and prevented well thinking, regular folks from solving our energy supply crisis. This book has thirty-three charts and graphs, most from bi-partisan or independent government sources to make a case for less government involvement in the energy industry. There are some astonishing revelations and a compelling case for reducing air emissions by 60 percent and creating jobs at the same time by building a particular type of new generation. This is a compelling argument that has never been presented before. I hope you enjoy the read.

Global warming and the resulting climate change affect our cities the most. In the recent years, migration to cities from the rural areas has increased. With this, an orderly structuring occurred in the cities, and as a result, the quality of the urban environment started to decrease. For this reason, planners and designers have started to introduce different approaches to make cities more sustainable and livable. This book contains new theories, approaches and practices that scientists deal with regarding physical planning and design.

The heart of the contemporary argument on climate change and energy transition focuses on how energy supply should be decarbonized to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.This book proposes an alternative approach.The Age of Fire Is Over: A New Approach to the Energy Transition finds that energy transitions are not driven by supply-side driven transformations but rather by evolutions in demand patterns.Exploring the potential of recently emerged key technologies, The Age of Fire Is Over argues that the so-called Energy Transition has not yet started. In the future, key technologies will significantly transform demand and provide services at a fraction of today's cost or offer new services not yet imagined. To a large extent, energy paradigm shifts are driven by such evolutions, largely inevitable and often unanticipated, because they provide societies with greater benefits: lower costs, more jobs, and rapid adaptation.This book closes with key novel recommendations for government institutions to accelerate the energy transition, which - instead of replicating an approach from the past - should focus on these demand transformations to both advance civilization and mitigate climate change.With Foreword by Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Schneider Electric Chief Executive Officer.

The 46 original case studies featured in this book demonstrate that in many business sectors, local people and foreigners are responding to the challenges of achieving business success while competing with integrity. Cases are divided into eight sub-topics discussing internet and social media issues, labor issues, corporate social responsibility, product and food safety, Chinese suppliers and production, environmental issues, corporate governance, as well as business and society in China. Each case is followed by a discussion section, with questions to prompt reflection. This book is a valuable resource for students of International Business and Management, as well as entrepreneurs and business managers working and doing business in China.

Ecology has become one of the most urgent and lively fields in both the humanities and sciences. In a dramatic widening of scope beyond its original concern with the coexistence of living organisms within a natural environment, it is now recognized that there are ecologies of mind, information, sensation, perception, power, participation, media, behavior, belonging, values, the social, the political... a thousand ecologies. This proliferation is not simply a metaphorical extension of the figurative potential of natural ecology: rather, it reflects the thoroughgoing imbrication of natural and technological elements in the constitution of the contemporary environments we inhabit, the rise of a cybernetic natural state, with its corresponding mode of power. Hence this ecology of ecologies initiates and demands that we go beyond the specificity of any particular ecology: a general thinking of ecology which may also constitute an ecological transformation of thought itself is required. In this ambitious and radical new volume of writings, some of the most exciting contemporary thinkers in the field take on the task of revealing and theorizing the extent of the ecologization of existence as the effect of our contemporary sociotechnological condition: together, they bring out the complexity and urgency of the challenge of ecological thought-one we cannot avoid if we want to ask and indeed have a chance of affecting what forms of life, agency, modes of existence, human or otherwise, will participate-and how-in this planet's future.

Winner of the 2017 Paul Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award from the American Sociological Association Although humans have long depended on oceans and aquatic ecosystems for sustenance and trade, only recently has human influence on these resources dramatically increased, transforming and undermining oceanic environments throughout the world. Marine ecosystems are in a crisis that is global in scope, rapid in pace, and colossal in scale. In The Tragedy of the Commodity, sociologists Stefano B. Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark explore the role human influence plays in this crisis, highlighting the social and economic forces that are at the heart of this looming ecological problem. In a critique of the classic theory “the tragedy of the commons� by ecologist Garrett Hardin, the authors move beyond simplistic explanations—such as unrestrained self-interest or population growth—to argue that it is the commodification of aquatic resources that leads to the depletion of fisheries and the development of environmentally suspect means of aquaculture. To illustrate this argument, the book features two fascinating case studies—the thousand-year history of the bluefin tuna fishery in the Mediterranean and the massive Pacific salmon fishery. Longo, Clausen, and Clark describe how new fishing technologies, transformations in ships and storage capacities, and the expansion of seafood markets combined to alter radically and permanently these crucial ecosystems. In doing so, the authors underscore how the particular organization of social production contributes to ecological degradation and an increase in the pressures placed upon the ocean. The authors highlight the historical, political, economic, and cultural forces that shape how we interact with the larger biophysical world. A path-breaking analysis of overfishing, The Tragedy of the Commodity yields insight into issues such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change. 

In Europe and other developed countries, much of the population live in small and medium sized towns. For many such places the pursuit of growth is no longer a viable strategic option. As the ability of small towns to compete with larger cities for private investment and government support diminishes, the number trapped in a spiral of long-term decline grows. Beginning with a brief overview of the global context, highlighting that urban shrinkage and decline is a widespread problem, Schlappa and Nishino illustrate how small towns can generate sustainable forward strategies in contrasting institutional contexts by fostering co-production, adjusting public facilities and right sizing the urban area. The analytical tools and practical examples provided by Schlappa and Nishino are relevant for political and administrative decisionmakers, leaders of civil society and business organisations in developing locally appropriate, creative and robust strategies to shrink smart and re-grow smaller.

This is a thoroughly revised and updated edition of an authoritative introduction to ecological modelling. Sven Erik Jorgensen, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ecological Modelling, and Giuseppe Bendoricchio, Professor of Environmental Modelling at the University of Padova, Italy, offer compelling insights into the subject. This volume explains the concepts and processes involved in ecological modelling, presents the latest developments in the field and provides readers with the tools to construct their own models.

The Third Edition features:
A detailed discussion and step-by-step outline of the modelling procedure.
An account of different model types including overview tables, examples and illustrations.
A comprehensive presentation of the submodels and unit processes used in modelling.
In-depth descriptions of the latest modelling techniques.
Structured exercises at the end of each chapter.
Three mathematical appendices and a subject index.

This practical and proven book very effectively combines the theory, methodology and applications of ecological modelling. The new edition is an essential, up-to-date guide to a rapidly growing field.

Presents the most commonly used model types with a step-by-step outline of the modeling procedure used for eachShows readers through an illustrated example of how to use each model in research and management settingsNew edition is revised to include only essential theory with a focus on applicationsIncludes case studies, illustrations, and exercises (case study of an ecological problem with full illustration on how to solve the problem)"

This study addresses the many initiatives to decrease industrial pollution emitting from the Pechenganikel plant in the northwestern corner of Russia during the final years of the Soviet Union, and examines the wider implications for the state of pollution control in the Arctic today. By examining the efforts of Soviet industry and government agencies, Finnish and Swedish officials, and Norwegian environmental authorities to curb industrial pollution in the region, this book offers an environmental history of the Arctic as well as a transnational, geopolitical history.

Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American ""tropical biologists"" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity. Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.-Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire.

Business leaders need to embrace sustainability in order to ensure the lasting success of their organizations. Co-authors Suhas Apte and Jagdish Sheth bring their expertise from practice and from academia to illustrate how business leaders can embed sustainability in a truly holistic and transformative way. Through an examination of such companies as Walmart, AT&T, IKEA and the Tata Group, Apte and Sheth have developed a proven and actionable framework rooted in the real world success of these companies. The case studies reveal how business leaders proactively engage, energize and promote market sustainability to all of their stakeholders including customers, employees, suppliers, investors and the government. The Sustainability Edge enables companies to critically engage their stakeholders and influence them to accept sustainability as part of their core mission.