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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Applied ecology
Business development in the contemporary world takes place in an
economically, politically, and socially complex environment. Today,
it is necessary to recognize the tremendous cultural diversity of
the world and it is essential to consider the specific cultural
values in managerial strategy and business practice worldwide.
Organizational Culture and Behavioral Shifts in the Green Economy
provides emerging research on the relationships between
organizations in the context of culture and diversity within a
sustainable economy. This book provides important insights into
topics such as circular economy, green advertising, and sustainable
development. Additionally, it addresses the significance of
concepts such as culture, organizational culture, individual
culture, and the style of leadership, which have been the concern
of many management professionals and scholars. This publication is
a vital resource for business managers, professionals,
practitioners, students, and researchers seeking current research
on the impact of organizational culture and behavioral shifts on
sustaining a green economy.
The Environment in Anthropology presents ecology and current
environmental studies from an anthropological point of view. From
the classics to the most current scholarship, this text connects
the theory and practice in environment and anthropology, providing
readers with a strong intellectual foundation as well as offering
practical tools for solving environmental problems. Haenn, Wilk,
and Harnish pose the most urgent questions of environmental
protection: How are environmental problems mediated by cultural
values? What are the environmental effects of urbanization? When do
environmentalists' goals and actions conflict with those of
indigenous peoples? How can we assess the impact of
"environmentally correct" businesses? They also cover the
fundamental topics of population growth, large scale development,
biodiversity conservation, sustainable environmental management,
indigenous groups, consumption, and globalization. This revised
edition addresses new topics such as water, toxic waste,
neoliberalism, environmental history, environmental activism, and
REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation), and it situates anthropology in the
multi-disciplinary field of environmental research. It also offers
readers a guide for developing their own plan for environmental
action. This volume offers an introduction to the breadth of
ecological and environmental anthropology as well as to its
historical trends and current developments. Balancing landmark
essays with cutting-edge scholarship, bridging theory and practice,
and offering suggestions for further reading and new directions for
research, The Environment in Anthropology continues to provide the
ideal introduction to a burgeoning field.
Despite the urgent need for action, there is a widespread lack of
understanding of the benefits of using green energy sources for not
only reducing carbon emissions and climate change, but also for
growing a sustainable economy and society. Future citizens of the
world face increasing sustainability issues and need to be better
prepared for energy transformation and sustainable future economic
development. Cases on Green Energy and Sustainable Development is a
critical research book that focuses on the important role renewable
energy and energy efficiency play in energy transition and
sustainable development and covers economic and promotion policies
of major renewable energy and energy-efficiency technologies.
Highlighting a wide range of topics such as economics, energy
storage, and transportation technologies, this book is ideal for
environmentalists, academicians, researchers, engineers,
policymakers, and students.
Rutger Hoekstra examines the complex relationship between the
monetary economy and the materials flows that are extracted and
emitted by economic activities. These physical flows are
responsible for many important environmental problems such as
unsustainable resource depletion, waste production and climate
change. This book discusses, applies and improves upon techniques
which link the monetary and physical economies for environmental
analyses. The book uses two sources of analysis: the physical
input-output table (PIOT), a macro-economic account for the
physical economy, recording material and product flows, including
resource extraction, emissions and recycling; and structural
decomposition analysis (SDA), which assesses the influence of
structural changes, such as economic growth, consumption shifts,
export growth and technological change, on environmental
indicators. Methodological improvements in the PIOT and SDA systems
are then presented by the author, and applied to empirical data.
Ecological and industrial economists, along with those with an
interest in environmental problems associated with the economy will
find this book, with its extensive historical analysis and novel
fore- and back-casting models, to be a fascinating read.
China and Taiwan have roughly one-eighth of the world's known
species. Their approaches to biodiversity issues thus have global
as well as national repercussions. Gerald McBeath and Tse-Kang Leng
explore the ongoing conflicts between economic development,
typically pursued by businesses and governments, and communities
seeking to preserve and protect local human and ecosystem values.
China and Taiwan have sharply different political and economic
systems. In Taiwan, a public relatively more supportive of
sustainable development, a free press, a more transparent
decision-making process, and an autonomous civil society have
influenced governance. Yet democratization has not guaranteed
better environmental outcomes. In China, on the other hand,
fragmentation of power and 'softer' forms of authoritarianism than
in the Maoist era have created openings for NGOs, scientists,
journalists, and officials seeking a sustainable future to
participate in the environmental policy making process. The authors
provide an explicit and comparative treatment of the national
policies preserving rare, threatened, and endangered species and
ecosystems. Considerable attention is paid to the actors involved
in policy formation and implementation as well as to recent cases
concerning biodiversity conservation in China and Taiwan. This
comprehensive volume will appeal to students and researchers in the
areas of political science, environmental science and politics,
environmental activists in national and international NGOs, and
members of multinational corporations working in developing
countries.
Technological change plays a crucial role in realizing energy
efficiency improvements and, therefore, in ameliorating the
conflict between economic growth and environmental quality.
However, the diffusion of new technologies can prove a costly and
lengthy process, meaning that many firms do not invest in
best-practice technologies. The author offers important new
explanations for this energy-efficiency paradox. This volume
contributes to a better understanding of the interplay between
economic growth, energy use and technological change, with
particular emphasis on the adoption and diffusion of energy-saving
technologies. In the theoretical section, the author examines how
several characteristics of technological change and environmental
policy affect the dynamics of technology choice. He demonstrates
how technological complementarity, learning processes and
uncertainty can help explain why the innovation and diffusion of
new technologies is such a protracted and complex procedure. The
empirical section explores long-run trends in energy and labour
productivity performance, as well as patterns of substitutability
and technological change across a range of OECD countries. The book
concludes by integrating the results in an applied policy model of
economy-energy interaction. This book is unique in applying
insights from different perspectives to the field of energy
economics, and by focusing on the diffusion of energy-saving
technologies rather than their innovation. It will be of immense
value to academics and policymakers with an interest in energy
economics, environmental economics and the interaction between
economic growth and natural resources.
With this remarkable book Eric Zencey changes the way we think
about nature by changing how we think about history. "The
ecological crisis is also a historical crisis," he writes. "If we
are out of place in nature, we are also out of place in time, and
the two kinds of exile are related." Zencey's way home takes us
many places: to a starlit mountaintop, where a nineteenth-century
sect awaits the second coming; to the northern woods during hunting
season; to the salt marshes of a Delaware childhood; to the
softball games and abandoned mill ponds of his adopted Vermont.
Always we are shown a world outside our preconceptions. In the
essay "In Search of Virgin Forest" we see that virgin forest is not
the pure escape from civilization that romantics make of it. Like
the second-growth forest around it, virgin forest too is a human
construct, one whose "different disturbance history" is not natural
but is equally the product of human perception and appropriation. A
nationally acclaimed novelist, Zencey has brought together
autobiography and philosophy to produce a work at once accessible
and intellectually rigorous. Perceptive, urgent, and lyrical, these
essays are alive with warmth and wit and the occasional glint of
melancholy. Virgin Forest is a passionate call for ecological
health. It amply demonstrates (as the final essay has it) "Why
History Is Sublime" if we suffer a postmodern lack of grounding,
only a rooted-in-place ecological sensibility can supply our need,
and historical understanding is its inescapable prerequisite.
Sustainability has become an increasingly vital topic of discussion
in modern society. Various businesses and their professionals have
begun adopting environmentally friendly practices and continue to
search for new ways to incorporate sustainability into their
protocol. Managerial Strategies and Green Solutions for Project
Sustainability is an essential reference source for the latest
scholarly research on core concepts of project sustainability and
its applications. Featuring extensive coverage on a broad range of
topics and perspectives, such as energy systems, climate change,
and human capital, this publication is ideally designed for
managers, researchers, and students seeking current information on
structured managerial strategies for planning, executing, and
assessing project sustainability performance.
Ecotones are dynamic over-lapping boundary areas where major
terrestrial biomes meet. As past studies have shown, and as the
chapters in this book will illustrate, their structure, size, and
scope have changed considerably over the millennia, expanding and
shrinking as climate and/or other driving conditions, also changed.
Today, however, many of them are changing at a rate not seen for a
long time, perhaps largely due to climate change and other
human-induced factors. Indeed ecotones are more sensitive to
climate change than the biomes on either side, and thus may serve
as critical early indicators of future climate change. As ecotones
change, they also redefine the limits of the biomes on either side
by altering their distributions of species because, in addition to
their own endemic species, any ecotone will also have species from
both adjoining biomes. Consequently, they may also be places of
high levels of species interaction, serving as active evolutionary
laboratories, which generate new species that then migrate back
into adjacent biomes. Ecotones Between Forest and Grassland
explores how these ecotones have changed in the past, how they are
changing today, and how they are likely to change in the future.
The book includes chapters from around the world with a special
focus on South American and Neotropical ecotones.
'In international and domestic law water has a widely multifaceted
relevance. This book addresses the multifarious water issues from
the perspective of a wide range of bodies of law, especially those
on foreign investment, international trade and human rights. Its
various contributions consistently follow a multi-layered
methodological approach encompassing legal, policy, economic,
financial, international and comparative domestic analysis. That
makes this book a precious tool for international and domestic
water policy makers, managers, practitioners and arbitrators.' -
Attila M. Tanzi, Bologna University Alma Mater Studiorum, Italy
'Charting the Water Regulatory Future is a multifaceted review of
contemporary issues concerning development and conservation of
water resources. Divided in three parts, this book contains
excellent articles that grapple with salient legal, economic and
ethical problems that the world will face in the not-too-distant
future.' - Thomas J. Schoenbaum, George Washington University Law
School, US Water is an essential resource for mankind, yet many
countries around the world are currently facing mounting freshwater
management challenges, with climate change and new regional
imbalances threatening to aggravate this situation further. This
timely book offers a unique interdisciplinary inquiry into the
issues and challenges water regulation will face in the coming
years. The book brings together economists, political scientists,
geographers and legal scholars to offer a number of proposals for
the future of water regulation. The contributions in this book are
grouped around specific themes. In the Part I, the contributions
address the challenges which water poses to public international
law. In the Part II, the authors explore the most pressing ethical,
legal, and social issues. Finally, the discussion in Part III
covers the economic drivers shaping the future of water. This
discerning book cov'This book, examining the issues, challenges and
directions in water regulation, is very timely. . . (It)
contributes to this gigantic endeavour by identifying some of the
most pressing legal and economic issues and challenges, and
pointing toward some possible future directions. It is written in a
technically accurate yet accessible language and will surely prove
useful to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners alike.' -
Fernando Dias Simoes, European Yearbook of International Economic
Law 2018 'In international and domestic law water has a widely
multifaceted relevance. This book addresses the multifarious water
issues from the perspective of a wide range of bodies of law,
especially those on foreign investment, international trade and
human rights. Its various contributions consistently follow a
multi-layered methodological approach encompassing legal, policy,
economic, financial, international and comparative domestic
analysis. That makes this book a precious tool for international
and domestic water policy makers, managers, practitioners and
arbitrators.' - Attila M. Tanzi, Bologna University Alma Mater
Studiorum, Italy 'Charting the Water Regulatory Future is a
multifaceted review of contemporary issues concerning development
and conservation of water resources. Divided in three parts, this
book contains excellent articles that grapple with salient legal,
economic and ethical problems that the world will face in the
not-too-distant future.' - Thomas J. Schoenbaum, George Washington
University Law School, US 'This excellent book addresses urgent
global water issues: scarcity of clean water as population grows
and the climate changes, balancing incentives for investment in
infrastructure with human rights to basic needs, jurisdiction and
management of international watersheds, and the role of trade and
international trade agreements. Individual chapters are
sophisticated but accessible and documented rigorously but
unobtrusively. The authors are reputed scholars from diverse
disciplines, representing a wide range of countries in terms of
geography and economic status.' - Alan Randall, The Ohio State
University, US and University of Sydney, Australia 'There is no
greater challenge in the 21st century than meeting the demand for
water amid global climate change. Rapid urbanization, a growing
global population projected to hit nine billion in the coming
decades, combined with rising demands for water intensive
agri-foods, is creating enormous stresses on global water
resources. This volume brings together an outstanding collection of
global experts to examine the regulatory challenges of water
management, addressing topics as diverse as regulating trade in
water, global institutions and water conservation, cross border
investment in water utilities, as well as ethical, social and legal
issues associated with equity and access to water. The volume
represents an original and immensely valuable collection of papers
for anyone concerned with the future of this most essential
resource.' - Darryl Jarvis, Hong Kong Institute of Education
'Pollution, population growth, climate change and regional
imbalances make water management a central challenge for
governments. New problems about water have arisen, which include
inefficient sanitation services, the depletion of groundwater,
unstable water supply networks and the use of water carriers. This
excellent edited collection brings us a fresh and broad
understanding on the future of water regulation from trade,
investment, sustainable development, human rights and economics
perspectives. This book is highly recommended for anyone interested
in international rule-making and regulatory development for public
goods in the era of globalization.' - Tsai-yu Lin, National Taiwan
University 'Overall, this edited volume has certainly succeeded in
analysing a highly technical topic from a wide variety of
disciplines and in an array of jurisdictions. Its interdisciplinary
nature, together with its consistency and clarity, makes it a
welcome and timely addition to the literature. It constitutes a
useful reference for both academics and practitioners who seek
guidance in the intricate and vitally important realm of water
regulation.' - Chinese Journal of Environmental Law ers all of the
primary actors in the actors of the water world, including
governments, companies, international organizations, and citizens.
With an original introduction by the editor and bringing a diverse
collection of perspectives into a single collection, the book will
be an essential resource for scholars and practitioners in legal
and policy fields such as trade and investment, human rights and
the environment as well as in international relations. Contributors
include: M. Ahmad, T. Ancev, S. Azad, A.P. Barcellos, R. Bates, D.
Chakraborty, C. Emeziem, S. Hamamoto, F. Hernandez-Sancho, M.
Hirano, J. Lassa, P. Mahadevan, T. McDonnell, S. Mukherjee, S.A.
Shah, V.J.M. Tassin, C. Titi, P. Turrini
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.
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.
This important text develops an institutional response to the core
issues raised in public policy making and develops a distinct
understanding of the role of institutions, not least in the study
of environmental problems. It questions: how are conflicting
interests shaped and taken into account in policy making? How
should they be accounted for? What motivates the behaviour of firms
and individuals, and how is it possible to change these motivations
to produce the favoured common outcomes? The author addresses these
questions by integrating elements from classical institutional
economics, neoclassical economics, sociology and ecological
economics. He argues that public policy in general, and
environmental policy in particular, are best examined from an
institutional perspective. In this way the author presents a
distinct and consistent alternative to standard neoclassical
economics for students and scholars who are interested in an
institutional understanding of environmental policy making. The
book is written in a clear and accessible style with boxes and
figures to help explain the issues and, as such, would be an ideal
alternative or supplement to the standard environmental economics
texts.
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