Ecological degradation has been an object of concern for the international community since the early 1970s, but legal approaches that have been employed to improve the protection of ecosystems have failed to halt this decline. Ecological Governance explores how the law should respond to this rapid global deterioration of ecosystems by examining the foundational scientific and ethical considerations for designing laws that are effective for ecological protection. Based on these analyses, it argues that developed states should prioritise the reduction of the ecological stresses for which they are responsible in decision-making on their future courses. The author also proposes structures for governance and associated legal frameworks that would enable the formulation and implementation of policies for ecological sustainability.

In Land Use Law and Disability, Robin Paul Malloy argues that our communities need better planning in order to be safely and easily navigated by people with mobility impairment and to facilitate intergenerational aging in place. To achieve this, communities will need to think of mobility impairment and inclusive design as land use and planning issues, in addition to understanding them as matters of civil and constitutional rights. Although much has been written about the rights of people with disabilities, little has been said about the interplay between disability and land use regulation. This book undertakes to explain mobility impairment, as one type of disability, in terms of planning and zoning. The goal is to advance our understanding of disability in terms of planning and zoning in order to facilitate cooperative engagement between disability rights advocates and land use professionals. This in turn should lead to improved community planning for accessibility and aging in place.

Transboundary transport of air pollution has been a topic of scientific research for several decades and has also been addressed already by environmental policies. However, the importance of air pollution transport on the largest - intercontinental - scales, has been recognized only recently. It was soon found that the meteorological and chemical processes involved in intercontinental pollution transport are distinctly different from those occurring during regional-scale transport, and thus new scientific methodologies are required for their study. In this book, leading scientists review the current state of knowledge in this emerging field of research, providing the reader with a process understanding of global-scale transport and its influence on the atmosphere's chemical composition. Long-range transport of anthropogenic pollution is contrasted with that of pollution produced by natural processes such as dust storms or forest fires. Furthermore, the prospects for international management of intercontinental transport of anthropogenic pollution are discussed.

Many books have now been published in the broad field of environmental toxicology. However, to date, none of have presented the often fascinating stories of the wildlife science, and the steps along the way from discovery of problems caused by environmental pollutants to the regulatory and non-regulatory efforts to address the problems. This book provides case by case examinations of how toxic chemical effects on wildlife have brought about policy and regulatory decisions, and positive changes in environmental conditions. Wild animal stories, whether they are about the disappearance of charismatic top predators, or of grossly deformed embryos or frogs, provide powerful symbols that can and have captured the public's imagination and have resulted in increased awareness by decision makers. It is the intent of this book to present factual and balanced overviews and summaries of the science and the subsequent regulatory processes that followed to effect change (or not). We cover a variety of chemicals and topics beginning with an update of the classic California coastal DDT story of eggshell thinning and avian reproduction to more recent cases, such as the veterinarian pharmaceutical that has brought three species of Asian vultures to the brink of extinction. Researchers, regulators, educators, NGOs and the general public will find valuable insights into the processes and mechanisms involved both in environmental scientific investigation and in efforts to effect positive change.

The National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF), announced in the Government of India s Budget 2010-11, is seen as a major step in India's quest for energy security and reducing the carbon intensity of energy. Funding research and innovative projects in clean energy technologies, and harnessing renewable energy sources to reduce dependence on fossil fuels constitute the objectives of the NCEF. The NCEF s utilization of funds is considered to be rather low and disbursements poorly aligned with the fund s stated objectives, thus posing a potential risk of diluting the focus of NCEF with adverse implications for the much-needed research and innovation in the clean energy sector in India.
The book provides a detailed framework for promoting effective utilization and administration of NCEF. To this effect, it identifies the most promising avenues for utilization of NCEF resources for catalytic opportunities and deployment of new technologies. It also identifies and prioritizes the specific energy sub-sectors towards which the NCEF resources are directed. It also makes suggestions for designing a smart monitoring and evaluation framework for the NCEF.
This work provides significant information for the government so that appropriate mid-course corrections may be made in a timely manner. This will also be useful in honing the strategic thinking on a suitable energy-technology policy and an assessment of technology needs and other barriers to the clean energy sector in India."

The term "Soil Security" is used in the context of maintaining the quality and quantity of soil needed in order to ensure continuous supplies of food and fresh water for our society. Topics in this unique book on the management of soil sustainability in the Mediterranean region include: soil information, land degradation, land desertification, pedoenvironments, and the carbon cycle and sequestration. One main focus of the book is the description of new approaches that have been adapted with regards to interdisciplinary soil ecosystem management to combat and mitigate desertification. The contributing authors are renowned experts in their fields which cover the subjects on traditional as well as innovative land use and management.

This book presents major texts by Prof. Dr. Lourdes Arizpe Schlosser, a pioneering Mexican anthropologist, on the occasion of her 70th birthday. She is a leading researcher into indigenous peoples, an innovator in women's studies and a global scientific leader who has inspired the international research and policy communities. Throughout her distinguished career she has analysed ethnicism and indigenous peoples, women in migratory flows, cultural and social sustainability and intangible cultural heritage as social capital, placing these issues on the world agenda for research and policy. Several of the 12 major texts in this volume have been published since 1972 in the US, Europe, Latin America and India; some were first published in Spanish and are available in English for the first time. This anthology also includes recent unpublished texts on culture, development and international cultural policy delivered at high-level international meetings.

These texts by Samir Amin have been selected for the purpose of encouraging readers to learn more about his work to trace the historical trajectory of capitalism, which has consistently produced polarization at the global level. Thus the dominated peripheries cannot hope to catch up with the social organization prevailing in the dominant centres and the impossibility of global capitalism becoming stabilized in its peripheries has resulted in the long decline of capitalism, coinciding with successive waves of active involvement by the peoples of the South to shape a new world, potentially embarking on the long journey to socialism. Amin presents this major conflict of the 20th century and identifies the new challenges that the system now faces in the 21st century. His analysis is conducted in terms of historical materialism and should be a useful tool for activists struggling for socialism. Their progress is linked to the emancipation of the Asian, African and Latin American peoples.

Christian Munthe undertakes an innovative, in-depth philosophical analysis of what the idea of a precautionary principle is and should be about. A novel theory of the ethics of imposing risks is developed and used as a foundation for defending the idea of precaution in environmental and technological policy making against its critics, while at the same time avoiding a number of identified flaws. The theory is shown to have far-reaching practical conclusions for areas such as bio-, information- and nuclear technology, and global environmental policy in areas such as climate change. The author argues that, while the price we pay for precaution must not be too high, we have to be prepared to pay it in order to act ethically defensible. A number of practical suggestions for precautionary regulation and policy making are made on the basis of this, and some challenges to basic ethical theory as well as consumerist societies, the global political order and liberal democracy are identified.

Munthe's book is a well-argued contribution to the PP debate, putting neglected justificatory and methodological questions at the forefront. His many discussions of alternative accounts as well as his drawing out the consequences of his own suggestion in practical cases give the reader a thorough, holistic sense of what justification of PP amounts to. /..../Munthe's main case, his argumentation for the requirement of precaution as a moral norm, is convincing and puts a strong pressure on too narrow alternative suggestions on how it should be perceived and justified, and he launches a plausible defence of its practical usability."

Does a connection exist between environmental degradation, resource scarcity and violent conflicts? Global environmental changes, such as climate change and sea level rise, shortage of fresh water and rapid soil degradation increasingly highlight the dimensions of environmental change in foreign and security policy. To reverse these negative environmental consequences over the long term, comprehensive and preventive policy approaches are urgently required.
This state-of-the-art book contains numerous articles by renown German-speaking experts from different scientific disciplines as well as international and European political advisors and diplomats. Together they discuss the complex causes of environmentally induced conflicts and the political and societal mechanisms for conflict prevention.

This work presents the evolution of the traditional concept of "national security" as military security to additionally embrace "environmental security" and then necessarily also "social (societal) security", thence to be termed "comprehensive human security". It accomplishes this primarily by presenting 11 of the author's own benchmark papers published between 1983 and 2010 (additionally providing bibliographic citations to a further 36 of the author's related publications during that period). The work stresses the importance of transfrontier (regional) cooperation, and also recognizes global overpopulation as a key impediment to achieving comprehensive human security.

Law's ideas of nature appear in different doctrinal and institutional settings, historical periods, and political dialogues. Nature underlies every behavior, contract, or form of wealth, and in this broad sense influences every instance of market transaction or governmental intervention. Recognizing that law has embedded discrete constructions of nature helps in understanding how humans value their relationship with nature. This book offers a scholarly examination of the manner in which nature is constructed through law, both in the 'hard' sense of directly regulating human activities that impact nature, and in the 'soft' manner in which law's ideas of nature influence and are influenced by behaviors, values, and priorities. Traditional accounts of the intersection between law and nature generally focus on environmental laws that protect wilderness. This book will build on the constructivist observation that when considered as a culturally contingent concept, 'nature' is a self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing social creation.

This important and insightful book provides, for the first time, a broad presentation of ongoing research into public participation in landscape conservation, management and planning, following the 2000 European Landscape Convention which came into force in 2004. The book examines both the theory of participation and what lessons can be learnt from specific European examples. It explores in what manner and to what extent the provisions for participation in the European Landscape Convention have been followed up and implemented. It also presents and compares different experiences of participation in selected countries from northern, southern, eastern and western Europe, and provides a critical examination of public participation in practice. However, while the book's focus is necessarily on Europe, many of the conclusions drawn are of global relevance. The book provides a valuable reference for researchers and advanced students in landscape policies and management, as well as for professionals and others interested in land-use planning and environmental management.

Since the 1960s the environment has become an issue of increasing public concern in North America and elsewhere. Triggered by the Second Indochina War (Vietnam Conflict) of 1961-1975, and further encouraged by the International Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, the environmental impact of war emerged and grew as a topic of research in the natural and the social sciences. And in the late 1980s this led additionally to a focus and debate on environmental security. Arthur Westing, a forest ecologist, was a major pioneer contributing and framing both of those debates conceptually, theoretically, and empirically, starting with "Harvest of Death: Chemical Warfare in Vietnam and Cambodia" (1972) (co-authored with wildlife biologist E.W. Pfeiffer and others). As a Senior Researcher at the Stockholm and Oslo International Peace Research Institutes (SIPRI and PRIO), and as a Professor of Ecology at Windham and Hampshire Colleges, Westing authored and edited books on "Ecological Consequences of the Second Indochina War" (1976), "Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment" (1977), "Warfare in a Fragile World: Military Impact on the Human Environment" (1980), "Herbicides in War: the Long-term Ecological and Human Consequences" (1984), "Environmental Warfare: a Technical, Legal and Policy Appraisal" (1984), "Explosive Remnants of War: Mitigating the Environmental Effects" (1985), "Global Resources and International Conflict: Environmental Factors in Strategic Policy and Action" (1986), "Cultural Norms, War and the Environment" (1988), "Comprehensive Security for the Baltic: an Environmental Approach" (1989), and "Environmental Hazards of War: Releasing Dangerous Forces in an Industrialized World" (1990) --- as well as authoring numerous UN reports, book chapters, and journal articles. This volume combines six of his pioneering contributions on the environmental consequences of warfare in Viet Nam and in Kuwait, on the environmental impact of nuclear war, and on legal constraints and military guidelines for protecting the environment in wartime"

The European Union's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is the world's largest carbon trading market. This book offers a new perspective on the EU ETS as a multi-level governance regime, in which the regulatory process is composed of three distinct 'competences' - norm setting, implementation, and enforcement. Are these competences best combined in a single regulator at one level of government or would they be better allocated among a variety of regulators at different levels of government? The combined legal, economic, and political analysis in this book reveals that the actual allocation of competences within the EU ETS diverges from a hypothetical ideal allocation in important ways, and provides a political economy explanation for the existing allocation of norm setting, implementation and enforcement competences among various levels of European government.

Conflicts between environmental protection laws and human rights present delicate trade-offs when concerns for social and ecological justice are increasingly intertwined. This book retraces how the legal ordering of environmental protection evolved over time and progressively merged with human rights concerns, thereby leading to a synergistic framing of their relation. It explores the world-making effects this framing performed by establishing how 'humans' ought to relate to 'nature', and examines the role played by legislators, experts and adjudicators in (re)producing it. While it questions, contextualises and problematises how and why this dominant framing was construed, it also reveals how the conflicts that underpin this relationship - and the victims they affect - mainly remained unseen. The analysis critically evaluates the argumentative tropes and adjudicative strategies used in the environmental case-law of regional courts to understand how these conflicts are judicially mediated, thereby opening space for new modes of politics, legal imagination and representation.

This multidisciplinary volume articulates the current and potential public policy discourse between energy security and climate change in the Asia- Pacific region, and the efforts taken to address global warming. This volume is unique as it analyses two important issues climate change and energy security through the lens of geopolitics at the intersection of energy security. It elaborates on the current and potential steps taken by state and non- state actors, as well as the policy innovations and diplomatic efforts (bilateral and multilateral, including regional) that states are pursuing. This Brief stems from the assumption that its audience is aware of the consequences of climate change, and will therefore, only look at the issues identified. It provides a useful read and reference for a wide- range of scholars, policy makers, researchers and post- graduate students.

In the second edition Steve Kesler (University of Michigan) has been added as an author to rewrite some chapters. The motivation for this revised edition is to more intensively address economic issues that surround the exploitation of mineral resources. This emphasis gives the book a unique character. With these sections "Metals and Society" deals with issues that pervade much of current science reporting the rate of exploitation of natural resources, the question of when or if these resources will be exhausted, the pollution and social disturbance that accompanies mining, the compromises and challenges that arise from the explosion of demand from China, India and other rapidly developing countries, and the moral issues that surround mining of metals in lesser developed countries for consumption in the first-world countries.

With its dual character, the book will be useful as an introductory text for students in the earth sciences and a reference volume for students, teachers and researchers of geography, economics and the social sciences.

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In dem Handbuch werden alle relevanten Anspruchsgrundlagen und Problemfelder bei schadigendem Verhalten der oeffentlichen Hand (Bund, Lander und Gemeinden mit allen Untergliederungen) verstandlich, umfassend und systematisch dargestellt. Erlautert werden Anspruche aus Amts- und Staatshaftung wie auch aus Enteignung, Aufopferung sowie sonstige Ersatz- und Ausgleichsanspruche. Der Band orientiert sich vorwiegend an der hoechst- und obergerichtlichen Rechtsprechung und liefert Hinweise auf entsprechende Regelungen in Europa und in anderen Landern.

Natural disasters are increasingly affecting the world, taking lives unexpectedly and leaving many others injured and homeless. Moreover, disasters disrupt local, national and even global economies, instantly changing the direction of development. In the first half of 2011 alone, 108 natural disasters occurred, killing over 23 thousand people, affecting nearly 44 million others and causing more than 253 billion US dollars of economic damages (CRED 2011,1). Large urban settlements have become increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of natural disasters. The concentration of substandard infrastructure and housing, material assets, and inherent socio-economic inequalities increase vulnerability to disasters in large urban areas, especially in developing countries. The size, number, functions, and geographical distribution of large- and megacities create a special concern for disaster risk. Good urban management practices can be a powerful catalyst for reducing losses from natural disasters, while simultaneously helping to develop a sustainable environment. Yet, the existing situation indicates that sustainable planning and risk management measures are not taken into consideration or may not be put into practice for a variety of financial, political, and social reasons. This book argues that, on one hand, socio-economic disparities resulting from unsustainable urban development can increase vulnerability to natural hazards, and on the other hand, when paired with natural hazards this increased vulnerability can negatively affect urban areas, resulting in further inequality. This book will showcase this argument with theoretical reviews and quantitative analyses on the interplay between sustainable development and disaster vulnerability as well as an in-depth case study of the role of urban planning and risk management practices in creating the socio-economic and spatial vulnerabilities and predicted earthquake risk in the megacity of Istanbul.

Canada has over-promised and under-delivered on climate change, setting weak goals and allowing carve-outs, exceptions, and exemptions to undermine its climate policies. Why, in an era when climate change is front of mind for so many people, have we failed to make progress? This question has been the source of heated debate across the political spectrum. In Picking Up the Slack, Andrew Green draws together different perspectives on the challenge facing Canada to offer an accessible account of the ideas and institutions that have impeded climate change action. Picking Up the Slack embraces the complexity of the problem, showing that its sources lie deep in Canada's institutional arrangements - pointing to the role played by federal-provincial power sharing arrangements, the heavy reliance on discretion in Canadian law, the role of the courts, and the impact of social norms. Working from a broad perspective that incorporates the insights of economics, law, political science, and philosophy, Green unpacks the features of Canadian policy making that determine the successes and failures of climate policies. His message is ultimately optimistic: Picking Up the Slack sheds light on how we can bring about meaningful movement towards a fair and positive future.

One of the early set of reforms that South Africa embarked on after emerging from apartheid was in the water sector, following a remarkable, consultative process. The policy and legal reforms were comprehensive and covered almost all aspects of water management including revolutionary changes in defining and allocating rights to water, radical reforms in water management and supply institutions, the introduction of the protection of environmental flows, and major shifts in charging for water use and in the provision of free basic water. Over ten years of implementation of these policy and legislative changes mean that valu-able lessons have already been learned and useful experiences gained in the challenge of effective water resources management and water services provision in a middle income country.

International Documents on Environmental Liability brings together 30 official full-text documents in the field of international environmental liability into an easily accessible, practical handbook; details the work of the International Law Commission on this topic; and provides the latest versions of international liability conventions and their statuses including the latest on: (1) 2003 UNECE Kyiv Liability Protocol; (2) 2004 EC Directive on Environmental Liability; (3) 2005 Antartica Liability Annex.

The authors combined capacity as an academic, policy advisor, and practitioner have helped bring forth a publication that reflects their experience of being involved in the development, negotiations and implementation of environmental liability regimes at both an international and European level.

I. The importance of legal questions related to the sea is obvious to everyone. It is hardly surprising that the subjects that make up international current events illustrate the leading role played by maritime affairs. Indeed, it is no coincidence that three quarters of the earth's surface is covered by oceans. Territorial seas, exclusive economic zones, exploitation of the seabed, fishing, transport, insurance, collision, and pollution raise many unresolved questions. On the other hand, the contrast of this importance with the modest attention that existing periodical publications merit must be underscored. Without undervaluing these publications, there has been a need for some time to create a vehicle of common expression, based on three central tenets: interdisciplinary framework, tendency towards uniform law, and both a theoretical and practical approach. a. A framework of interdisciplinary nature seems to be relevant as it is desirable to overcome the artificial separation between public and private law.