This book outlines the transitions between cultured and natural land cover/vegetation types and their implications in the search for alternatives to reverse the trend of anthropogenic environmental degradation. It also elaborates on the proposed "standardized hierarchical Mexican vegetation classification system" and geobotanical mapping, a critical transversal environmental issue. The first chapter consists of an historical review of the common approaches to the study of vegetation both in Mexico and in other regions of the world. The second chapter concisely analyzes the existing schools of thought that have led to the development of vegetation classification systems based on physiognomic, structural and floristic approaches. The focal point of the book is the "standardized hierarchical Mexican vegetation classification system" (SECLAVEMEX - "Sistema jerarquico estandarizado para la clasificacion de la vegetacion de Mexico"). Chapter 3 describes the system's organizational levels along with the criteria defining them and the nomenclatural basis for the denomination of each type of vegetation. It also includes a series of tables explaining and precisely defining the meaning of each concept, criterion, character and element used to help readers successfully identify the type of vegetation in a determined area. The fourth chapter highlights SECLAVEMEX's inclusive character as evidenced through its compatibility with other systems currently used around the globe. Three concepts are critically reviewed: land cover, land use and vegetation. These are often the study subject of the contrasting disciplines geography, agronomy and ecology, which all rely upon plant species assemblages. As such, the final chapter focuses on a critical transversal environmental issue - geobotanical mapping. Geobotanical mapping offers a baseline for land cover/use planning and provides critical information on ecological, economic and cultural attributes, which can be used as a basis for environmental-policy decisions. The proposed SECLAVEMEX was applied to Mexico as an example of land cover, land use and vegetation patterns intermingling as the result of a long human influence. SECLAVEMEX, however, can be adapted and hopefully adopted globally as a baseline for consistently comparing geobotanical patterns and their transitions.

The purpose of this work is to develop a better understanding and thinking about the cumulative impacts of multiple natural resource development projects. Cumulative impacts are now one of the most pressing, but complex challenges facing governments, industry, communities, and conservation and natural resource professionals. There has been technical and policy research exploring how cumulative environmental impacts can be assessed and managed. These studies, however, have failed to consider the necessary integration of community, environment and health. Informed by knowledge and experience in northern British Columbia, this book seeks to expand our understanding of the cumulative impacts of natural resource development through an integrated lens. The book offers a timely response to a growing imperative - proposing integrative response to multiple natural resource developments in a way that addresses converging environment, community and health issues. Informed by the editors' experiences across several complementary areas of expertise, we envision this book as appealing to a wide range of researchers, educators and practitioners, with relevance to a growing audience with appetite for and interest in integrative approaches.

Part of a series which covers advances and progress in the field of human ecology, this volume discusses such topics as: the world around us and how we make it; the political economy of environmental problems and policies; and, the assembling of human populations.

Systemic change is required move to a circular economy (CE) model which can meet the demands of a growing population in a manner that is decoupled from resource use and waste generation. This book takes a deep dive into the innovation aspect of the circular economy (CE), with a specific focus on India as a geography, where the transformation to a circular economy is underway. How a developing country like India is tackling the complexities in the transformation and creating innovative solutions is showcased in this book through many practical examples and inspirational case studies. The book lays the foundations for mainstreaming Resource Efficiency (RE) / CE in India, and covers innovation led by businesses and start-ups, along with innovative policies, financing and collaborative models required to spur and accelerate circular economy approaches and provides linkages to the international context. Features: * Provides insight into role of innovation in circular economy transition. * Helps to develop and facilitate adoption of resource efficiency policy and strategy with particular focus on key resource sectors and waste streams. * Treats circular economy as a holistic approach across the entire lifecycle, and places emphasis on upstream interventions and systems change. * Examines current context of COVID19 and its impact on circular economy models and practices. * Touches upon how the EU-based approach was adapted and contextualized significantly to work in the unique Indian landscape. This book is aimed at students, researchers and professionals in circular economy, sustainability, business innovation, environmental studies, natural resources management, environmental and resource conservation policy.

This book presents innovative strategies for sustainable, socially responsible enterprise management from leading thinkers in the fields of corporate citizenship, nonprofit management, social entrepreneurship, impact investing, community-based economic development and urban design. The book's integration of research and practitioner perspectives with focused best practice examples offers an in-depth, balanced analysis, providing new insights into the social issues that are most relevant to organizational stakeholders. This integrated focus on sustainable social innovation differentiates the book from academic research monographs on stakeholder theory and practitioner guides to managing traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. Managing for Social Impact features 15 contributed chapters written by thought leaders, industry analysts, and managers of global and local organizations who are engaged with innovative models of sustainable social impact. The editors also provide a substantive introductory chapter describing a new strategic framework for enhancing the Return on Social Innovation (ROSI) through four pillars of social change: Open Circles, Focused Purpose Sharing, Mutuality of Success, and a Persistent Change Perspective.

As climate change continues to dominate the international environmental agenda, phenology - the study of the timing of recurring biological events - has received increasing research attention, leading to an emerging consensus that phenology can be viewed as an early warning system' for climate change impact. A multidisciplinary science involving many branches of ecology, geography and remote sensing, phenology to date has lacked a coherent methodological text. This new synthesis, including contributions from many of the world's leading phenologists, therefore fills a critical gap in the current biological literature. Providing critiques of current methods, as well as detailing novel and emerging methodologies, the book, with its extensive suite of references, provides readers with an understanding of both the theoretical basis and the potential applications required to adopt and adapt new analytical and design methods. An invaluable source book for researchers and students in ecology and climate change science, the book also provides a useful reference for practitioners in a range of sectors, including human health, fisheries, forestry, agriculture and natural resource management.

This book assesses the recent growth and future prospects of private transnational environmental certification and standards regimes. Regimes of this type have proliferated in the last 20 years as businesses and environmental groups have sought to replace, or improve upon, traditional inter-governmental conventions and treaties. Recent theory and research suggest that these regimes transfer the environmental standards and norms of West Europe and North America outward, via trade and investment, to developing states worldwide. This book challenges this literature and examines in detail to what degree, and under what circumstances do these transnational regimes truly influence industrial environmental practices in developing countries.

A Shadowy backlash against environmentalists has begun to emerge in America, the most visible element of which calls itself the "Wise Use" movement. Among its stated goals are the unregulated use of timber, oil, gas, minerals, and range land, and the abolition of all environmental laws and agencies. In this first in depth investigation of the "Wise Use" backlash, author David Helvarg visits rallies, conferences, and confrontations that are the fronts in its war against the greens. Helvarg shows the dimensions of this struggle as it is being waged in the courts; in the media, through popular mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh and sympathetic coverage in influential newspapers such as the New York Times; in the heretical claims of the movement's "counterscience"; and in the growing number of physical confrontations and threats used against environmental activists. Helvarg also documents the failure of the FBI to prevent such violence.

This book provides a complete overview of an alpine ecosystem, based on the long-term research conducted at the Niwot Ridge LTER. The alpine ecosystem features conditions near the limits of biological existence, and is a useful laboratory for asking more general ecological questions, because it offers large environmental change over relatively short distances. Factors such as macroclimate, microclimate, soil conditions, biota, and various biological factors change on differing scales, allowing insight into the relative contributions of the different factors on ecological outcomes.

Biofuels and Rural Poverty makes an original contribution to the current controversial global debate on biofuels, in particular the consequences that large-scale production of transport fuel substitutes can have on rural areas, principally in developing countries but also in some poor rural areas of developed countries.

Three key concerns are examined from a North-South perspective: ecological issues (related to land use and biodiversity), pro-poor policies (related to food and land security, gender and income generation) and equity of benefits within the global value chain. Can biofuels be pro-poor? Can smallholder farmers be equitably integrated in the biofuels global supply chain? Is the biofuels production chain detrimental to biodiversity?

Most other books available on biofuels take a technical approach and are aimed at addressing energy security or climate change issues. This title focuses on the socio-economic impacts on rural people's livelihoods, offering a unique perspective on the potential role of biofuels in reducing rural poverty.

This title discusses various effects of heavy metal exposure to legumes as well as the bioremediation potential of rhizosphere microbes. Availability of heavy metals, their uptake and the effects of metals on various signaling pathways within legumes are presented. Furthermore, the effects of heavy metals to nitrogen fixing microorganisms and how microsymbionts can overcome metal stress is presented in detail. The role of nitrogen fixers in decontamination of heavy metal toxicity, mycoremediation of metal contaminated soils, microbially mediated transformation of heavy metals and action of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria and nitrogen fixers together in detoxifying heavy metals are broadly explained. This volume is a useful tool for scientists, policy makers and progressive legume growers intending to develop safe and healthy legumes for future generations.

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.

We are in the second decade of modem environmental law. By some indicators this body of regulation has matured greatly. We can point to statutes and codes at the federal, state, and local levels which address almost every conceivable form of pollution and environmental insult. Yet, despite the existence of this large body of law, despite considerable expenditures on enforcement, and despite the energetic efforts of people sympathetic to environmental objectives, violations are numerous. Serious pollution problems are commonplace. Love Canal, the Valley of the Drums, Times Beach, and Stringfellow Acid Pits epitomize the national environmental quality challenge. Daily, a major illegal disposal of haz ardous waste is recorded; a new mismanaged dump site is discovered; a toxic substance is found in our drinking water; or a failure to meet a water or air quality standard is identified. Many of these violations involve American business. Failures to comply are of several types. A small businessman in Pennsylvania mistakenly allows a spillover of a pollutant into a protected stream. An industrialist in the Midwest adds to his fortune by illegally dumping dangerous chemicals. A series of errors by several firms, some of which no longer exist, combine to create a health threatening conflagration on the West Coast. An automobile company interprets one of the almost innumerable air pollution rules differently from government: It produces a car which the government says fails to comply with the Clean Air Act."

Debate about how best to ensure the preservation of agricultural biodiversity is caught in a counter-productive polemic between proponents and critics of market-based instruments and agricultural modernisation. This book argues that neither position does justice to the range of strategies that farmers use to manage agrobiodiversity and other livelihood assets as they adapt to changing social, economic, and environmental circumstances. Chapters explore relationships between the exploitation and conservation of agricultural biodiversity and the livelihoods of agricultural communities, and evaluate the capacity of national and multilateral institutions and policy settings to support the protection and capture by communities of agrobiodiversity values. The place of ecosystem services in valuing biodiversity in the marketplace is emphasized. A number of authors assess the potential for market-based instruments and initiatives to encourage the protection of biodiversity, while others compare agrobiodiversity/community relationships, and the effectiveness of instruments designed to enhance these, across international boundaries. The book takes a comparative approach, drawing on empirical case studies from across the developed and developing worlds. In doing so, the book does not simply point to similarities and differences in the experience of rural communities. It also shows how global trade and multilateral institutions bring these otherwise disparate communities together in networks that exploit and/or preserve agrobiodiversity and other resources.

This incisive book addresses the challenges facing the current institutional framework for governance of high seas fisheries. Marcus Haward identifies significant issues and difficulties affecting the management of fisheries in areas beyond national jurisdiction, as well as highlighting the key role that fishing and fisheries play in global ocean governance. Through an assessment of the development of regional fisheries organizations and their implementation of management tools, Haward demonstrates their importance in contemporary ocean governance, offering a critical examination of the challenges they face in the pursuit of sustainable fisheries management. The book investigates the ability of regional fisheries bodies to constrain catches and capacity, and explores the factors impacting this, for example, states' lack of cooperation and failure to commit to effective enforcement, and conflicting interests in resource utilization and conservation. Governing Oceans in a Time of Change will prove a critical read for scholars and students of environmental policy, management and governance, particularly those with an interest in ocean governance and fisheries. Policymakers and practitioners working in this area will also find this book beneficial.

Part of a series which covers advances and progress in the field of human ecology, this volume discusses such topics as: the components of socioecological organization; social entropy theory; and, minimum data for comparative human ecological studies; among other topics.

Because marine governance in most countries is sectoral, maritime policies are frequently fragmented, reactive, and even contradictory, meaning that marine resources are underutilized and poorly protected. To avoid these problems, the concept of integrated national maritime policy (INMP) has been developed. This book examines this concept, analysing its current application in four countries Australia, Canada, UK and USA whilst discussing at length how it might be applied to Saudi Arabia.

Based on extensive fieldwork carried out in Saudi Arabia including interviews with officials in government departments with maritime responsibilities, and a survey administered to 230 stakeholders the book offers a unique insight into INMP in the Kingdom. The book provides a practical template for developing the political will and civil constituency in Saudi Arabia necessary for the introduction of INMP. In setting out in detail its benefits, this book could help build the momentum in Saudi Arabia required to implement the concept as well as attract other countries to do the same. A significant contribution to the growing literature on ocean governance, this book will be of great importance to policy makers and scholars of Middle Eastern studies, marine governance and comparative politics.

Growing concerns about the impacts of climate change and dependence on fossil fuels have intensified interest in bioenergy from sugar cane and other crops, highlighting important links between energy, environment and development goals. Sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by severe poverty; the possibility to exploit a renewable energy resource offers valuable avenues for sustainable development and could support a more dynamic and competitive economy. This book describes how the bioenergy expansion will improve rural livelihoods, reduce costly energy imports, reduce GHG emissions, and offer new development paths.

Drawing on international experience, it is shown that harnessing this potential will require significant increases in investment, technology transfer, and international cooperation. Because of its high efficiency, the authors argue that sugar cane should be viewed as a global resource for sustainable development and should command much greater focus and concerted policy action. Through an analysis of the agronomy, land suitability and industrial processing of sugar cane and its co-products, along with an assessment of the energy, economic and environmental implications, this volume demonstrates that sugar cane offers a competitive and environmentally beneficial resource for Africa's economic development and energy security.

With fourty-four authors representing thirty organisations in sixteen countries, the book offers a truly international and interdisciplinary perspective by combining technical and economic principles with social, political and environmental assessment and policy analysis.

The field of insect nutritional ecology has been defined by how insects deal with nutritional and non-nutritional compounds, and how these compounds influence their biology in evolutionary time. In contrast, Insect Bioecology and Nutrition for Integrated Pest Management presents these entomological concepts within the framework of integrated pest management (IPM). It specifically addresses bioecology and insect nutrition in modern agriculture. Written for graduate students and professionals in entomology, this book covers neotropical information in three sections:

• General Aspects: Basic bioecology and insect nutrition; artificial diets; insect/plant interactions; insect symbionts; the interface of chemical ecology with the food; and insect cannibalism
• Specific Aspects: Specific feeding guilds of insects including ants, social bees, leaf chewers, seed suckers, seed chewers, root feeders, gall makers, detritivorous feeders, pests of storage grains, fruit flies, aphids, endo- and ectoparasitoids, predators, crisopids, and hematophagous insects
• Applied Aspects: Host plant resistance and the design of IPM programs in the context of insect bioecology and nutrition

Much of the research on which these chapters were written was done in Brazil and based on its neotropical fauna. The complexity and diversity of the neotropics provides enough data that readers from all zoogeographical regions can readily translate the information in this book to their specific conditions. The book s value as an entry point for further research is enhanced by the inclusion of approximately 4,000 references.

This book presents a comprehensive typology and a comprehensible description of spatiotemporal models used in population dynamics. The main types included are: reaction-diffusion systems, patch models, matapopulation approaches, host parasitoid models, cellular automata (interacting particle systems), tessellations and distance models. The models are introduced through examples and with informative verbal explanations to help understanding. Some of the cellular automation examples are models not yet published elsewhere. Possible extensions of certain model types are suggested.

Environmental Policy is an increasingly important subject as we enter an era where environmental issues are affecting all walks of life. This informative Research Review provides a guide through the behavioral and political foundations of environmental economic policy. It discusses articles which give an in-depth view of the current economic discipline whilst also looking at research from other social and behavioral sciences. Students and scholars as well as environmental policy makers will find this an essential tool to navigate the political and behavioural issues that we have to understand in order to resolve some of the biggest political issues of our time.

Integrated assessment modelling is an active and rapidly developing field, triggered by the debate on climate change and the move towards the goal of sustainable development. This book provides an integrated approach to modelling, using a transdisciplinary approach. The author summarizes the main issues involved in the changing global system, and gives an overview of the emerging field of integrated assessment. He then presents a general discussion of the methodological principles of a multidisciplinary integrated modelling approach. Existing tools are examined and new methodological approaches are applied to various aspects of the problem of global change. The case studies focus on optimizing climate change mitigating policies, the allocation of emission rights and the the adaptive behaviour of social and biological agents. Special attention is given to the role of uncertainty, especially the subjective interpretation of uncertainties (world views), and the role of adaptive multi-agent modelling. The book concludes with a discussion on future uses of integrated assessment modelling in the global environment. Modelling Global Change will be vital to economists and scientists who have an interest in integrated assessment modelling, global modelling and decision support, environmental and ecological economists and those interested in sustainable development.

The use of environmentally safe products is an emerging and popular trend throughout various industries. Product manufacturing and sales has changed in order to incorporate green initiatives that will appeal to this fast-growing market. Driving Green Consumerism Through Strategic Sustainability Marketing is an essential reference source for the latest scholarly research on the latest trends of consumerism and its effect and implications on the environment. Featuring coverage on topics and perspectives such as nutricosmetic products, green marketing, and animal products, this publication is ideal for those interested in aspects of green consumerism.