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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Conservation of the environment
Shows how rewarding our green inheritance is - before it is too late and we destroy our life-support system Highlights a deepening concern about the destruction that threatens our plant heritage Demonstrates the wonder and worth of plants and their great importance and potential - plants provide us with power - food, energy, medication and oxygen levels Explains why our plants cannot take any more punishment and how those that remain can be saved Actively campaigns the need to halt the devastation on our plant system and subsequently the animal kingdom
An ambitious and beautifully illustrated account of the evolution and biology of insects. Insects are the busy, teeming arthropods on whose activities much of life on earth depends, and whose global populations are currently under the gravest of threats - with unimaginable consequences for us all. In Alien Worlds, Steve Nicholls explores nothing less than a complete natural history of insects, bringing us on a journey through a world of a million species and their phenomenal and extraordinary diversity. A fantastically authoritative and congenial guide, led by a fluent and entertaining writer with the ability to make complex ideas comprehensible, it is not only a feast for the curious mind but also contains beautiful and visually arresting imagery of the tiny beasts whom we depend on greatly.
This important book examines the economic policies required to reduce carbon dioxide emissions - a major source of pollution throughout the world. It explores the likely impact of environmental taxes on income distribution and economic welfare. The authors consider a tax on domestic fuel and power and a carbon tax, and the likely adverse distribution effects of these on a population. The analysis allows for the direct and indirect effects (through inter-industry transactions) of taxes on prices and consumers' responses to these price changes. The welfare effects are also estimated for a variety of income groups. The authors then evaluate the inequality and social welfare measures and consider whether the distributional effects can be overcome by adjusting transfer payments to compensate lower-income groups. This study examines environmental taxes in Australia with methods which can be applied to other countries, some of which were specifically designed to overcome data limitation problems. Environmental Taxes and Economic Welfare will be of special interest to researchers, academics, policymakers and advisers on taxation and environmental policy.
In his enthusiastic explorations and fervent writing, Michael J. Yochim "was to Yellowstone what Muir was to Yosemite. . . . Other times, his writing is like that of Edward Abbey, full of passion for the natural world and anger at those who are abusing it," writes foreword contributor William R. Lowry. In 2013 Yochim was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). While fighting the disease, he wrote Requiem for America's Best Idea. The book establishes a unique parallel between Yochim's personal struggle with a terminal illness and the impact climate change is having on the national parks--the treasured wilderness that he loved and to which he dedicated his life. Yochim explains how climate change is already impacting the vegetation, wildlife, and the natural conditions in Olympic, Grand Canyon, Glacier, Yellowstone, and Yosemite National Parks. A poignant and thought-provoking work, Requiem for America's Best Idea investigates the interactions between people and nature and the world that can inspire and destroy them.
Imperiled: The Encyclopedia of Conservation, part of a three-volume set, updates on humanity's expanding ecological footprint. With climate change, increases in human population, consumption levels, and other anthropogenic factors, nearly half the known species on Earth could soon be gone. This book provides a global synthesis of the world's imperiled species and ecosystems. It documents rarity and endangerment, the major drivers of loss, areas of conservation importance, and implementation strategies to save and restore imperiled species and ecosystems. This is first of its kind coverage of Earth's imperiled species and ecosystems in a comprehensive encyclopedia.
Join Joe Shute as he travels across Britain tracing the history of our seasons and discovering how they are changing. We talk about them. We plan our lives around them. The changing seasons are part of us all. But what happens when the weather changes beyond recognition? Joe Shute has spent years unpicking Britain’s love affair with the weather, poring over the centuries of folklore, customs and rituals our seasons have inspired. But in recent years Shute has noticed a curious thing: the British seasons are changing far faster and far more profoundly than we realise. Daffodils in December, frogspawn in November, swallows that no longer fly home, floods, wildfires and winters without snow. Nothing is behaving as it should, sending nature into an increasing state of flux. In Forecast, Shute travels all over Britain tracing the history of the seasons, and discovering the extent to which we are now growing disconnected from them. While documenting these warped rhythms caused by the changing weather, he records the parallels in his personal journey as he and his wife struggle to conceive a child. This is a book that races to keep up with the march of the seasons as they rapidly change course. It examines how the weather is reshaping the world around us, and asks what happens to centuries of culture, memory and identity when the very thing they subsist on is slipping away.
Must freedom be sacrificed to achieve ecological sustainability - or vice versa? Can we be genuinely free and live in sustainable societies? This book argues that we can, if we recognise and celebrate our ecological embeddedness, rather than seeking to transcend it. But this does not mean freedom can simply be redefined to fit within ecological limits. Addressing current unsustainability will involve significant restrictions, and hence will require political justification, not just scientific evidence. Drawing on material from perfectionist liberalism, capabilities approaches, human rights, relational ethics and virtue theory, Michael Hannis explores the relationship between freedom and sustainability, considering how each contributes to human flourishing. He argues that a substantive and ecologically literate conception of human flourishing can underpin both capability-based environmental rights and a eudaimonist ecological virtue ethics. With such a foundation in place, public authorities can act both to facilitate ecological virtue, and to remove structural incentives to ecological vice. Freedom and Environment is a lucid addition to existing literature in environmental politics and virtue ethics, and will be an excellent resource to those studying debates about freedom with debates about ecological sustainability.
This book introduces updated information on conservation issues, providing an overview of what is needed to advance the global conservation of freshwater decapods such as freshwater crabs, crayfish, and shrimps. Biodiversity loss in general is highest in organisms that depend on intact freshwater habitats, because freshwater ecosystems worldwide are suffering intense threats from multiple sources. Our understanding of the number and location of threatened species of decapods, and of the nature of their extinction threats has improved greatly in recent years, and has enabled the development of species conservation strategies. This volume focuses on saving threatened species from extinction, and emphasizes the importance of the successful implementation of conservation action plans through cooperation between scientists, conservationists, educators, funding agencies, policy makers, and conservation agencies.
Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring The Arctic is demanding global attention. It is warming, melting, and thawing in a manner that threatens fundamental state-change. For communities that call the Arctic 'home' this is unwelcome. A warming Arctic brings with it the spectre of costly disruption and interference in indigenous lives and communal welfare. For others, the disappearance of sea ice makes the Arctic appear more accessible and less remote. This also brings with it dangers such as the prospect of a new era of great power rivalries involving China, Russia, and the United States. Submarine and long-range bomber patrolling are now commonplace. New terms such as 'global Arctic' are being used to capture the dynamic of change while others muse about the 'return of a Cold War'. The reality is inevitably more complex. The physical geography of the Arctic is highly varied and variable. Environmental change brings opportunities for indigenous and non-indigenous life-forms to survive and even thrive. The Arctic's four million people are not helpless pawns in a game of global geopolitics. The Arctic is not only a resource hotspot but also a place where sustainable energy systems are being introduced. A warming Arctic with less ice and permafrost is not unique in the longer history of the Earth either. The Arctic is a complex space. In this Very Short Introduction, Klaus Dodds and Jamie Woodward consider the major dimensions of the region and the linkages beyond - from the geopolitical to the environmental. They examine the causes, drivers, and effects of cultural, physical, political, and economic change, and ponder the future of the Arctic. As they show, it is a future which will affect us all. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
We've all seen the news of dead and dying whales, and the alarming amounts of plastic pollution washing up on beaches or floating on the tides. The oceans are in very great danger for many reasons, and it is not just plastic waste, which is bad enough. Overfishing, acidification, coral bleaching, nuclear waste, seabed mining, military testing, and climate change, are taking a very heavy toll on marine creatures of all types, from tiny plankton to the massive whales. The eponymous Dead Zones are aptly named. Many marine creatures are in danger of extinction. Life on this planet depends on healthy oceans. We depend on healthy oceans. This book takes a look at the threats to marine life, and what is being done to save the seas. It is a call to action to save Mother Ocean. The author explains how he became personally motivated to do what he could. As a singer and songwriter he wrote songs and came up with the idea for Ocean Aid concerts. Now he has written the book you are holding. He hopes to inspire you to think about what you can do. We all need to help save the seas.
It is more than a thousand years since the exploitation of the elephant began.
A celebrated biologist’s manifesto addressing a soil loss crisis accelerated by poor conservation practices and climate change “Jo Handelsman is a national treasure, and her clarion call warning of a looming soil-loss catastrophe must be heard. Add her clearly written alarm to other future-shocks: climate change, pandemics, and mass extinctions.”—Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance “The ground beneath our feet is slipping away as we lose the precious soil that sustains us. Jo Handelsman’s writing—as rich and life supporting as the soil itself—is a riveting warning.”—Alan Alda, actor, writer, and host of the podcast Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda This book by celebrated biologist Jo Handelsman lays bare the complex connections among climate change, soil erosion, food and water security, and drug discovery. Humans depend on soil for 95 percent of global food production, yet let it erode at unsustainable rates. In the United States, China, and India, vast tracts of farmland will be barren of topsoil within this century. The combination of intensifying erosion caused by climate change and the increasing food needs of a growing world population is creating a desperate need for solutions to this crisis. Writing for a nonspecialist audience, Jo Handelsman celebrates the capacities of soil and explores the soil-related challenges of the near future. She begins by telling soil’s origin story, explains how it erodes and the subsequent repercussions worldwide, and offers solutions. She considers lessons learned from indigenous people who have sustainably farmed the same land for thousands of years, practices developed for large-scale agriculture, and proposals using technology and policy initiatives.
Like so many of us, Lucinda Fleeson wanted to escape what had
become a routine life. So, she quit her big-city job, sold her
suburban house, and moved halfway across the world to the island of
Kauai to work at the National Tropical Botanical Garden. Imagine a
one-hundred-acre garden estate nestled amid ocean cliffs, rain
forests, and secluded coves. Exotic and beautiful, yes, but as
Fleeson awakens to this sensual world, exploring the island's food,
beaches, and history, she encounters an endangered paradise the
Hawaii we don't see in the tourist brochures.
On the black markets of Southeast Asia, rhino horn is worth more than gold, cocaine and heroin. This is the chilling story of a two-year-long investigation into a dangerous criminal underworld and the merciless syndicates that will stop at nothing to obtain their prize. It is a tale of greed, folly and corruption, and of an increasingly desperate battle to save the rhino — which has survived for more than fifty million years — from extinction. Killing for Profit is a compelling, meticulous and revelatory account of one of the world’s most secretive trades. It exposes the poachers, gangsters, con men, mercenaries, killers, gunrunners, diplomats, government officials and crime bosses behind the slaughter. And it follows the bloody trail from the front lines of the rhino wars in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to the medicine markets of Vietnam and the lair of a wildlife-trafficking kingpin on the banks of the Mekong River in Laos…
The English Heritage Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey (RCZAS) programme has produced a wealth of new information, with over 45 survey reports now completed. Alongside this, the offshore survey completed as part of the Marine Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund has increased understanding of early prehistoric coastal change, while other researchers have extended back the time scale for a human presence in England to at least 900,000 years. From a wider Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management perspective, there has been increased participation by English Heritage in Defra and Environment Agency initiatives. It is now time to review what has been achieved and learnt from the RCZAS and other recent coastal historic environment studies. The book will include an introduction to the coastal historic environment, a consideration of long-term coastal change, an outline of survey, recording and characterisation methodology, a national review of the coastal historic environment and a separate discussion of regional significance, a set of research priorities for the future, and a final section considering how England s coastal heritage should be managed in the future. The fact that climate change will impact significantly, and mostly adversely, on the coastal historic environment, gives a special urgency to this new publication."
When northern Kenyans find elephant bones, they lay down blossoms and branches as a mark of respect, honouring their crucial connection with the wildlife they live alongside. In our changing world, these values are vitally important. For decades, northern Kenya was one step away from a warzone, on the frontlines of climate change and habitat loss. People slept with their shoes on, fearing attack. Wildlife was decimated. Yet, facing the most extreme challenges, people united. What began as a last-ditch effort to save rhinos from extinction sparked a remarkable return of wildlife, with the once-struggling cattle ranch Lewa named a UN World Heritage Site for its outstanding value to humanity. This served as a catalyst for much broader action. Communities created a network of protected lands across an area larger than Switzerland. Through conservation, they built peace, driving social, environmental and political change. From tracking elephants through the bush to gun battles with bandits and treks through Al-Qaeda territory, Peter Martell tells the exciting story of a conservation movement that gives hope. At a time when humanity is reassessing its broken relationship with nature, these communities offer an inspirational blueprint, proving that environmental change does not have to divide, but can bring us together.
This book is a guide to a sustainable design process that moves from theory, to site and energy use, to building systems, and finally to evaluation and case studies, so you can integrate design and technology for effective sustainable building. Kuppaswamy Iyengar shows you how to get it right the first time, use free energy systems, and utilise technologies that minimize fossil fuel use. Each chapter has a sustainable design overview, technical details and strategies marked by clear sections, a summary, and further resources. Heavily illustrated with charts, tables, drawings, photographs, and case studies, the book shows technologies and concepts integrated into cohesive project types, from small and large office spaces to single and multiuse residences, hospitals, schools, restaurants, and warehouses to demonstrate implementing your designs to meet clients' needs now and for the future. Includes an overview of alternate assessment and evaluation systems such as BREEAM, CASBEE, GBTool, Green Globes alongside LEED, ECOTECT, energy 10, HEED and eQuest simulation programs. The guide reveals the importance of the building envelope-walls, superstructure, insulation, windows, floors, roofs, and building materials-on the environmental impact of a building, and has a section on site systems examining site selection, landscape design, thermal impact, and building placement.
You don’t have to be an animal rights activist to take an interest in how we treat other creatures. All of us, with few exceptions, use animals in some way: for food, research, recreation and companionship. In Britain we eat around a billion chickens every year, while 60% of all mammals on Earth, by biomass, are now livestock. In 2020, approximately 2.88 million scientific procedures involving living animals were carried out in Great Britain. Because all this happens in our name, as consumers and citizens we have a duty to understand, to care and to exert some influence over how animals are used. But because such use is ingrained in our daily lives and largely happens behind closed doors, we are barely aware of it. The animals deserve better. Understanding the inconsistencies in our attitudes, in the law and in what is deemed acceptable practice is an important first step. This timely and incisive book makes compelling reading for anyone who has an interest in animals, whether wild or domestic, free-living or captive, people intrigued about how their food is produced, and those keen to make informed and intelligent decisions.
Planting for Pollinators is an easy-to-use gardening guide to help you encourage different types of insect pollinators into your garden. Insect pollinators not only bring joy to our gardens, they also provide an essential service for our planet. Without bees, flies, hoverflies, butterflies, moths and beetles, some of our favourite foods, flowers and plants would cease to exist. Whether you have a large garden, an urban balcony or just a window box, planting to encourage pollinators is a fantastic and surprisingly easy first step in creating a wildlife-friendly space. Planting for Pollinators features a wide range of plants, with guidance on the best ways to nurture lawns and verges, pollinator predation and tips on watching and photographing wildlife. Beautifully illustrated throughout with images from award-winning wildlife photographer Heather Angel, this essential guide will show you how plants communicate with insects, and why it's so important to protect our pollinators. Organised by season and featuring more than 100 plant species - including bulbs, annuals, perennials, shrubs and climbers - this practical guide will help you to discover the short- and long-term benefits of having a variety of pollinators visit your garden.
Experience the hauntingly beautiful world of orcas, and discover the stories that unfold when humans enter oceans alongside them. When intrepid biology student Hanne Strager volunteered to be the cook on a small research vessel in Norway's Lofoten Islands, the trip inspired a decades-long journey into the lives of killer whales—and an exploration of people's complex relationships with the biggest predators on earth. The Killer Whale Journals chronicles the now internationally renowned science writer's fascinating adventures around the world, documenting Strager's personal experiences with orcas in the wild. Killer whales' incredible intelligence, long life spans, and strong family bonds lead many people to see them as kindred spirits in the sea. But not everyone feels this way—like wolves, orcas have been both beloved and vilified throughout human history. In this absorbing odyssey, Strager traces the complicated relationship between humans and killer whales, while delving into their behavior, biology, and ecology. She brings us along in her travels to the most remote corners of the world, battling the stormy Arctic seas of northern Norway with fellow biologists intent on decoding whale-song, interviewing First Nations conservationists in Vancouver, observing Inuit hunters in Greenland, and witnessing the dismantling of black market "whale jails" in the Russian wilderness of Kamchatka. Through these captivating stories, Strager introduces us to a diverse cast of characters from Inuit elders to Australian Aboriginal whalers and guides us through the world's wild waters, from fjords above the Arctic circle in Norway to the poaching-infested waters off Kamchatka. Featuring astonishing photographs from famed nature photographer and conservationist Paul Nicklen, The Killer Whale Journals reveals rare and intimate moments of connection with these fierce, brilliant predators.
A completely new look at plants - not only in food, drink and commerce, and how they have created civilisation, trade and empires, but also in love, in war, in crime, in horror and delight, in music, poetry and prose, and on the screen. Not just another gardening or plant book, this is a complete picture of how plants affect people, for better or worse, now, in the past and in the future with illuminating and startling facts about their ubiquitous presence in human affairs - through life, death, illness, happiness, murder, despair, desperation, love, hate, loss, and far more. From Presidents to pop stars, from scientists to slavers, royals to religious leaders, chefs to charlatans, pioneers to politicians, artists to actors, Plants & Us is a unique overview of plants, wild and cultivated, their vital importance and the threats they face. Above all, how they affect all our lives in stories that will often surprise the reader. |
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