Amid evictions, raids, killings, the drug trade, and fire, inner-city Johannesburg residents seek safety and a home. A grandmother struggles to keep her granddaughter as she is torn away from her. A mother seeks healing in the wake of her son’s murder. And displaced by a city’s drive for urban regeneration, a group of blind migrants try to carve out an existence.

The Blinded City recounts the history of inner-city Johannesburg from 2010 to 2019, primarily from the perspectives of the unlawful occupiers of spaces known as hijacked buildings, bad buildings or dark buildings. Tens of thousands of residents, both South African and foreign national, live in these buildings in dire conditions. This book tells the story of these sites, and the court cases around them, ones that strike at the centre of who has the right to occupy the city.

In February 2010, while Johannesburg prepared for the FIFA World Cup, the South Gauteng High Court ordered the eviction of the unlawful occupiers of an abandoned carpet factory on Saratoga Avenue and that the city’s Metropolitan Municipality provide temporary emergency accommodation for the evicted. The case, which became known as Blue Moonlight and went to the Constitutional Court, catalysed a decade of struggles over housing and eviction in Johannesburg.

The Blinded City chronicles this case, among others, and the aftermath – a tumultuous period in the city characterised by recurrent dispossessions, police and immigration operations, outbursts of xenophobic violence, and political and legal change. All through the decade, there is the backdrop of successive mayors and their attempts to ‘clean up’ the city, and the struggles of residents and urban housing activists for homes and a better life.

The interwoven narratives present a compelling mosaic of life in post-apartheid Johannesburg, one of the globe’s most infamous and vital cities.

It is predicted that we will lose all of our commercial fish species by 2048. Within the next 60 years all of our planets topsoil is expected to perish. How did we come to this? What are the forces at play that have led us on such a destructive and unsustainable path? Why has the environmental movement taken so long to gain necessary traction?

The answers to these important questions have surprisingly been difficult to find. Very few resources provide the necessary exploration of the broad range of environmental challenges that face our world, nor the solutions to these overwhelming obstacles. Our unstainable methods of consumption have reached an all-time high, and our planet is suffering a great deal as a result. The driving forces behind these high levels of consumption – population growth and increased demand- are leading us into an uncertain future. It is now clear that drastic transformation is needed. It was the unintended consequences of innovation that led us into this situation. But as it stands, innovation will be the primary key to leading us out of it.

Green Is Not A Colour sets the bar straight. By cutting to the very root of the problems we face, we are able to see how the environmental crisis is inextricably linked to every aspect of our lives. By identifying the opportunities- both readily available and in development-that provide the solutions to these problems, the book reveals how human ingenuity will prove to be a powerful tool in steering us onto a sustainable path.

From the bestselling authors of Saving the Last Rhinos comes a new vivid account of environmental conservation and the ongoing efforts to conserve and restore Africa's iconic wildlife and its wildernesses on a war-ravaged continent.

Conservationist Grant Fowlds lives to save and protect Africa's rhinos, elephants and other iconic wildlife, to preserve their habitats, to increase their range and bring back the animals where they have been decimated by decades of war as in countries like Angola, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This vivid account shares the desperate conservationist efforts to save, preserve and restore Africa’s wildlife, and the tragic losses that sometimes happen along the way. Fowlds describes heart-pumping face-offs with poachers and how impoverished rural people are exploited by rapacious local businessmen. He also highlights the world-threatening illicit trade in ivory and endangered wildlife, some if it sold in ‘wet markets’.

Rewilding Africa goes to the heart of the impact of the Covid-19 on conservation efforts, it describes the importance of wildlife tourism that sustains rural communities; and tells of conservationists' passioned endeavours to support people through the crisis.

Fowlds and Spence take readers on a journey across some of the richest habitats in Africa, teaching the importance of conservation, and the vitalness the survival of wildlife has on humanity’s existence and that of the planet.

Gorgeous photos, detailed maps, and a moving personal narrative narrate grueling expeditions to the source of Africa’s famous Okavango Delta, a sanctuary of biodiversity.

Explorers discover signs of Angola's ghost elephants—presumed extinct after decades of civil war but now reappearing in the highlands wilderness.

Follow intrepid explorer Steve Boyes as he leads the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project, documenting the little-known lakes and rivers flowing through central Africa to the vast Okavango, a region supporting the world’s largest elephant population as well as lions, cheetahs, and hundreds of bird species.

For miles on end of twisting waterways and leech-filled swamps, Boyes and his fellow explorers pole their flatboats with only satellite imagery and hippo trails to guide them. Sometimes they must drag their boats through dense bush or mud-thick waters. An angry hippo threatens to overturn the caravan; swarms of bees dive-bomb explorers’ ears and eyelashes. In Angola, closed off by war for decades, the team tracks ghost elephants—a subspecies thought to have disappeared forever.

By day they press on, by night they camp under the stars. Lions roar and hyenas howl in the distance. Locals become friends and fellow travelers—guardians of the rivers, sharing generational knowledge of these waters they call the “source of life.”

With more than 100 photographs and maps, including a foreword by Prince Harry and portraits of local wisdom keepers, this beautiful book provides a glimpse of primeval wilderness still thriving on the planet—and the grit of explorers determined to preserve it.

Do you love living in the city but dream about growing your own wholesome fruit and vegetables? South Africa’s organic gardening guru, Jane Griffiths, shows you just how easy it is to achieve a flourishing food garden, no matter how small your space.

Jane’s Delicious Urban Gardening is packed with inspirational ideas and practical information on all aspects of urban eco living.

In her trademark sensible and easy-to-follow style, Jane provides a wealth of tips and suggestions for:

• growing organic vegetables just about anywhere – from containers to edible walls, from raised beds to rooftops, from community gardens to neglected pavements
• planting and maintaining a space-efficient urban orchard
• converting an existing lawn or tennis court into an instant edible oasis
• keeping urban bees, hens and aquaponic tanks
• harvesting rainwater and recycling grey water
• introducing solar power into your home
• converting a chlorinated swimming pool into a wetland-filtered haven.

Illustrated with hundreds of beautiful colour photographs, Jane’s Delicious Urban Gardening is essential reading for anyone wanting to live a more sustainable, productive and healthy lifestyle in the city.

When Julia Martin visits the Greek islands of the Dodecanese, beauty and suffering seem inextricable.

On the Sponge Islands follows her journey through Rhodes, Symi, Halki, Kalymnos and Patmos to trace the cultural and ecological legacy of sponge diving. Because of their wonderful porosity, sea sponges have always been perfect for a myriad of human uses, and men from the islands had been diving for them and trading them since antiquity.

It was a rich harvest that came at the cost of many lives. And it couldn’t last. Everything, one might say, flowed through sponges. Until it didn’t.

Martin’s lyrical, searching prose is rich in dialogue, extraordinary characters, and curious tales. This is a story of extinction and resilience, of loss and restoration. It reminds us that it may not be too late – not yet.

At a time when democracies seem paralyzed by fear and populations are turning inward, award-winning journalist John Kampfner travels to ten countries confronting our shared challenges with bravery and imagination.

- Taiwan's health system achieves 90% patient satisfaction at a fraction of the cost of the British NHS.
- Moroccan solar panels in the Sahara produce enough clean energy to power two million homes.
- Estonia has transformed itself into a digital pioneer in a single generation - becoming the world's first fully digital government where 97.6% of citizens access state services online.
- Costa Rica has tripled its economy while doubling its forest cover, proving that green policies can pay direct dividends.

What unites these countries, and more, is a refusal to accept that difficult problems are unsolvable. The places showing true innovation are often those with their backs against the wall - not wealthy nations assuming they have all the answers.

Braver New World is an urgent reminder that solutions exist. The question is whether we have the courage to learn.

Consisting of an assortment of landmark essays and the best in contemporary scholarship, this anthology delves deeply into the most pressing environmental issues of our times. Articles included in this anthology are distinguished for their relevance to real-life policy making and for their ability to promote rich and lively discussion about controversial matters. In addition, the editors' careful organization of the topics and illuminating section previews keep students focused on the most essential points of current environmental debates.

Adventures in Volcanoland charts journeys across deserts, through jungles and up ice caps, to some of the world's most important volcanoes, from Nicaragua to Hawaii, Santorini to Ethiopia, exploring Tamsin Mather's obsession with these momentous geological formations, the cultural and religious roles they have played in the minds of those living around them at different times throughout history, and the science behind their formation and eruptions.

Volcanoes help to make and shape our world, bursting forth from inside of the earth and, in many places, looming over us. Present since the earth's beginning they continue to maintain its life support systems and, their extraordinary chemistry may even have created the ingredients needed for life to kick start.

In some places volcanoes are even beginning to provide us with part of the energy we need to curb our use of fossil fuels. They have fascinated humans for millennia, their eruptions charted throughout history, seeming to show us how the earth has been living, breathing and changing for billions of years.

Why exactly are these geological mammoths found where they are? What can they teach us about our environment, the Anthropocene and the ecological disaster that is climate change? Are there volcanoes on other planets, and what might they tell us about whether we could one day live there if we exhaust our own habitat? How can we predict if or when volcanoes might explode?

Adventures in Volcanoland is an enthralling mix of travel, science and environmental writing for fans of Robert MacFarlane and Raynor Winn.

A powerful, gripping story about an extraordinary herd of elephants, and the woman dedicated to keeping them safe.

Thula Thula game reserve in South Africa is home to a herd of elephants who have 4,000 hectares to roam. So owner Françoise was taken aback to find the herd’s matriarch Frankie – a feisty character – roaming her garden and eating her daisies. Was Frankie pointing out who was really in charge, or was there another reason for her presence?

The Elephants of Thula Thula is a heart-warming, sometimes funny, often moving account of life on a game reserve dedicated to saving endangered species. As Françoise struggles with bureaucracy and with the ever-present threat from poachers she is determined to keep Thula Thula going. The search is on to get a girlfriend for rhino Thabo – and then, as his behaviour becomes increasingly aggressive, a big brother to teach him manners. She realizes a dream with the arrival of Savannah the cheetah – an endangered species not seen in the area since the 1940s. But will Thula Thula survive the pandemic, and the threat from a mining company wanting access to its land?

As tragedy strikes the herd, Françoise mourns the loss of Frankie and watches as a new matriarch steps up to lead the family. She realizes once again that with their wisdom, resilience and communal bonds, the elephants have much to teach us.

Community development both a collective effort and an achievement driven by individual facilitators with the aim of lifting a community out of poverty. The sixth edition of Community Development: Breaking the cycle of poverty continues to be a definitive guide for community development workers, students and practitioners alike. The book contextualises poverty and explains the process of community development.

It pays attention to the development environment and explains concepts such as asset-based community development and the social enterprise sector. In addition to context and process, the book details the skills required by a community development worker to function in the field. It also explains how to empower the development worker to train others in order to build capacity in the community and work towards breaking the cycle of poverty.

This edition of Community Development: Breaking the cycle of poverty is strengthened by the inclusion of extensive support material. More practical case studies, specifically relevant to the South African environment, have been added and questions on the case studies are included in the book.

In this fascinating and entertaining memoir, the legendary White Bushman, Peter Stark, writes about his experiences in the former German South West Africa: first as a farm manager and lion hunter, and later as nature conservationist.

Stark's fearless personality and phenomenal knowledge of the veld, combined with an intimate knowledge of the San people and their culture make for stories and experiences that most people can only dream of. Whether it's about lions chasing San trackers, elephants trampling a campsite or the spearing of 32 scorpions with a kebab-skewer - Stark's stories are bound to awe and entertain.

With Peter Stark's unique and genial narrative voice, The White Bushman presents an important cultural-historical perspective on the country that became Namibia. The photographs, taken either by Stark himself or his fellow game wardens, contribute greatly to enhancing the images conjured up by these captivating adventures and anecdotes.

Capitalism’s addiction to fossil fuels is heating our planet at a pace and scale never before experienced.

Extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels and accelerating feedback loops are a commonplace feature of our lives. The number of environmental refugees is increasing and several island states and low-lying countries are becoming vulnerable. Corporate-induced climate change has set us on an ecocidal path of species extinction. Governments and their international platforms such as the Paris Climate Agreement deliver too little, too late. Most states, including South Africa, continue on their carbon-intensive energy paths, with devastating results. Political leaders across the world are failing to provide systemic solutions to the climate crisis. This is the context in which we must ask ourselves: how can people and class agency change this destructive course of history?

The Climate Crisis investigates ecosocialist alternatives that are emerging. It presents the thinking of leading climate justice activists, campaigners and social movements advancing systemic alternatives and developing bottom-up, just transitions to sustain life. Through a combination of theoretical and empirical work, the authors collectively examine the challenges and opportunities inherent in the current moment.

Most importantly, it explores ways to renew historical socialism with democratic, ecosocialist alternatives to meet current challenges in South Africa and the world.

Falling Monuments, Reluctant Ruins: The Persistence of the Past in the Architecture of Apartheid interrogates how, in the era of decolonisation, post-apartheid South Africa reckons with its past in order to shape its future. Architects, historians, artists, social anthropologists and urban planners seek answers in this book to complex and unsettling questions around heritage, ruins and remembrance.

What do we do with hollow memorials and political architectural remnants? Which should remain, which forgotten, and which dismantled? Are these vacant buildings, cemeteries, statues, and derelict grounds able to serve as inspiration in the fight against enduring racism and social neglect? Should they become exemplary as spaces for restitution and justice? The contributors examine the influence of public memory, planning and activism on such anguished places of oppression, resistance and defiance. Their focus on visible markers in the landscape to interrogate our past will make readers reconsider these spaces, looking at their landscape and history anew.

Through a series of 14 empirically grounded chapters and 48 images, the contributors seek to understand how architecture contests or subverts these persistent conditions in order to promote social justice, land reclamation and urban rehabilitation. The decades following the dismantling of apartheid are surveyed in light of contemporary heritage projects, where building ruins and abandoned spaces are challenged and renegotiated across the country to become sites of protest, inspiration and anger.

This ground-breaking collection is an important resource for professionals, academics and activists working in South Africa today.

In this extraordinary and hopeful book, leading environmentalist Tony Juniper CBE identifies the real problem at the heart of the climate and nature crises.

From soil loss to wildfires, degraded rivers, mass migration and conflict, the environmental crisis is already here - and it's set to get much worse. While billionaires build remote bunkers and make plans for colonies on Mars, climate collapse impacts the most vulnerable among us first and hardest. But what this radical and ground-breaking book proves is that inequality isn't just about who suffers the consequences, it is the main obstacle blocking action - and it has been for decades.

How can people lead good lives without ultimately hastening global collapse? The answer lies in fairness. We can't fight the climate and nature crises without addressing the ever-widening gaps between the rich and poor, the powerful and the weak. Drawing upon more than 40 years of experience in research, practical work, campaigning and advocacy, combined with interviews with globally renowned experts, in Just Earth Tony Juniper reveals the system shifts needed to achieve real, lasting change.

Cengage Learning's FUNDAMENTALS OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY brings course concepts to life with interactive learning, study, and exam preparation tools along with market leading text content for introductory physical geography courses.

Whether you use a traditional printed text or all digital FUNDAMENTALS OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY CourseMate alternative, it's never been easier to better understand the relationship between humans and physical geography, and how one impacts the other.

There is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war. And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound toward the United States.

Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

This is the most urgent book ever to appear from the pen of cultural icon Koos Kombuis.

Sometimes, when he is in an irreverent mood, Koos writes under the fun-filled pseudonym ‘Joe Kitchen’.

This time around, though, he is deadly serious.

“The Death of History” is a climate change diary. When Koos started writing it more than two years ago, he did not intend for it to be published as a book, but the longer he continued writing, the more he became aware of the urgency of sharing his message with the world.

In short, “The Death of History” is a warning to all of humanity that must be heeded NOW.

Approx.3300 pages

Food Sustainability and the Media: Linking Awareness, Knowledge and Action is the first book to explore the roles that the media plays in raising awareness, spurring action, and increasing understanding about food security and global sustainability issues. The book addresses the means of leveraging traditional and new media to advance food and sustainability discourse by linking awareness, knowledge, and action. The book links sustainability and food security in media communication to address different topics, including the way climate change is framed by the media, key factors of success and failure in NGOs, public and corporate communication, and climate change denial.

Taking its title from a chilling warning made by the United Nations that the world's soils could be lost within a lifetime, Sixty Harvests Left uncovers how the food industry is threatening the planet. Put simply, without soils there will be no food: game over. And time is running out.

From the United Kingdom to Italy, from Brazil to the Gambia to the USA, Philip Lymbery, the internationally acclaimed author of Farmageddon, goes behind the scenes of industrial farming and confronts 'Big Agriculture', where mega-farms, chemicals and animal cages are sweeping the countryside and jeopardising the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the nature that we treasure.

In his investigations, however, he also finds hope in the pioneers who are battling to bring landscapes back to life, who are rethinking farming methods, rediscovering traditional techniques and developing technologies to feed an ever-expanding global population.

Impassioned, balanced and persuasive, Sixty Harvests Left not only demonstrates why future harvests matter more than ever, but reveals how we can restore our planet for a nature-friendly future.

Biological and Environmental Hazards, Risks, and Disasters, Second Edition provides an integrated look at major impacts to the Earth’s biosphere caused by diseases, algal blooms, insects, animals, species extinction, deforestation, land degradation, and comet and asteroid strikes, with important implications for humans. This second edition from Elsevier’s Hazards and Disasters Series incorporates perspectives from the natural and social sciences to offer in-depth coverage of threats from microscopic organisms to celestial objects and their potential impacts. Contributions from expert biological, health, ecological, environmental, wildlife, physical, and health scientists, readers will gain valuable insights on damages, causality, economic impacts, preparedness, and mitigation.

Solar Driven Green Hydrogen Generation and Storage presents the latest research and technologies in hydrogen generation through solar energy. With in-depth coverage of three key topics, the book discusses green hydrogen technologies, solid hydrogen storage, and the applications of hydrogen energy. The book begins with a deep dive into photoelectrochemical water splitting, examining different catalysts such as polymer-based catalysts and blue-titania catalysts. Subsequent chapters then analyze hydrogen production techniques, including photobiological, thermochemical and biomass gasification methods. After reviewing key hydrogen storage technologies, the book finishes with a summary on the applications of hydrogen in various industry sectors. This is an essential resource for students, researchers and engineers interested in renewable energy, hydrogen production and energy storage.

Handbook of Arsenic Toxicology, Second Edition presents the latest findings on arsenic, including its chemistry, sources and effects on the environment and human health. The book discusses both acute and chronic effects, discussing many aspects of arsenic, from physical and chemical properties, exposure, epidemiology, organ toxicity, diagnosis, prevention and treatment. Fully updated and revised, this new edition includes new topics on risk assessment, molecular mechanisms of arsenic, advances in the integrated approach to testing, assessment and development, evaluation and application of high content predictive models, and new alternative methods (NAMS) in the context of Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) to assess toxicology. This comprehensive resource allows readers to effectively assess the risks related to arsenic, providing them with all they need to know on arsenic exposure, toxicity and toxicity prevention.

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.