Ecosystem Management and Sustainability analyzes myriad human-initiated processes and tools developed to foster sustainable natural resource use, preservation, and restoration. It also examines how humans interact with plant, marine, and animal life in both natural and human-altered environments. Experts explain the complex ecosystem relationships that result from invasive species, roads, fencing, and even our homes by addressing topics such as fire and groundwater management, disturbance, and ecosystem resilience. Because most people in the 21st century live in urban environments, the volume pays special attention to the ecology of cities, with detailed coverage on topics ranging from urban agriculture to landscape architecture. The volume focuses on how ecosystems across the world can be restored, maintained, and used productively and sustainably.

Tackling the most pressing problem of our time - how capitalism, and business, can provide a future of wealth, equity and ecological integrity, this book is destined to be one of the most important business, economics and politics books of the year. Sir Jonathon Porritt, CBE, Co-Founder of Forum for the Future, is a leading influence on business and industry, the UK government's premier adviser on sustainable development and a top author, broadcaster and visionary. As our great economic machine grinds relentlessly forward into a future of declining fossil fuel supplies, climate change and ecosystem failure, humanity, by necessity, is beginning to question the very structure of the economy that has provided so much wealth, and inequity, across the world. In this fresh, politically charged analysis, Jonathon Porritt wades in on the most pressing question of the 21st century - can capitalism, as the only real economic game in town, be retooled to deliver a sustainable future?

'A hymn of love to the world ... A journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two ways of knowledge together. Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings - asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass - offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

This comprehensive reader offers in-depth analyses of critical developments in environmental values, bringing together in one volume the most influential scholarship in the field. Each carefully selected contribution assesses some of the most pressing questions of our time, focusing on the relationship between human values, world views and preferences, and the natural world. As the first reader of its kind in a rapidly expanding multidisciplinary field, this text provides students with a valuable framework for understanding the intellectual progress and future development of the study of environmental values. The book clearly emphasizes that environmental values must be understood not only as economic, benefit-cost or 'willingness to pay' considerations, but also as normative principles that are fundamental to behaviour and management practices.

The Spirit of Sustainability helps readers navigate the moral worlds and ethical concepts, and social and religious practices related to sustainability. In collaboration with the Forum on Religion and Ecology, an established network of leading scholars, it explores a wide range of topics and perspectives, from the promise and problems of approaching sustainability through global and indigenous religions, to major theories in philosophy and environmental ethics, and professional practices and social movements. This volume presents the various goals of sustainability - ecological integrity, economic health, human dignity, fairness to the future, and social justice - and provides a framework for reasoning through many interrelated environmental challenges for both current and future generations.

'Conservation in the 21st century needs to be different and this book is a good indicator of why' Bulletin of British Ecological Society. Against Extinction tells the history of wildlife conservation from its roots in the 19th century, through the foundation of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire in London in 1903 to the huge and diverse international movement of the present day. It vividly portrays conservation's legacy of big game hunting, the battles for the establishment of national parks, the global importance of species conservation and debates over the sustainable use of and trade in wildlife. Bill Adams addresses the big questions and ideas that have driven conservation for the last 100 years: How can the diversity of life be maintained as human demands on the Earth expand seemingly without limit? How can preservation be reconciled with human rights and the development needs of the poor? Is conservation something that can be imposed by a knowledgeable elite, or is it something that should emerge naturally from people's free choices? These have never been easy questions, and they are as important in the 21st century as at any time in the past. The author takes us on a lively historical journey in search of the answers.

The concept of the 'triple bottom line' (TBL) - the idea that business activity can simultaneously deliver financial, social and environmental benefits - was introduced in the early 1990s. A decade on, The Triple Bottom Line: Does it All Add Up? brings together the world's leading experts on corporate responsibility to assess the implications, benefits and limitations of the TBL. This collection provides a review of what has already been achieved in stimulating change in corporate culture and bringing businesses to an appreciation of the importance and benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and good environmental performance. It further explores the conceptual and practical limits of the metaphor of the TBL and sets out what can be achieved through regulation and legislation, presenting detailed professional procedures for environmental accounting and management and social auditing. The contributors' wealth of experience and insight provides a vivid picture of how much attention is now being focused by businesses on delivering more than just financial targets, and they clearly outline the necessary steps for successfully continuing along this trajectory.

In this updated edition, the author analyses the problems that conservation faces and seeks the new ideas and energy that it needs for the future. Concepts such as biodiversity and sustainability, and changes in our understanding, appreciation and concern for nature and culture are tightly intertwined, as are those between economics and the countryside. Adams explores these links and the scientific, cultural and economic significance of conservation. He argues that conservation must move beyond the boundaries of parks and reserves to embrace the whole countryside, and that it must be built into ordinary life, not isolated as a specialized product kept only in reserved places.

In a society more concerned with how to cope with existential dread than how to make actionable changes to save the planet, a surprisingly large number of Americans identify as environmentalists. What can individual people do to lessen human impacts on the planet? This is not an easy question. Most research is focused on large-scale changes that go beyond anything an individual can accomplish, and people are left feeling defeated rather than inspired to make changes in their everyday lives. Change starts at home, and F Stuart Chapin, III has assembled a book for people who want to learn more about global changes and, more importantly, what they can do about them, starting today. Grassroots Stewardship approaches our current situation with an educated sense of hope and positivity. This book emphasizes actions by individuals, rather than governmental or corporate institutions, to trigger transformational change. Readers will learn what they can do to most significantly transform their communities and the planet with more sustainable pathways.

Globalization and increasing international trade are becoming a fact of life, bringing increasing tensions and conflicts over their impacts on societies, livelihoods and the environment. The impacts are felt in industrialized countries but are often most harsh in developing economies. The growing debate involves not only professional economists and lawyers, but a broad range of academic disciplines as well as civil society and citizens' groups around the world. This text presents the most important contributions to the debate, and to the understanding of how sustainable international trade could be achieved. It should provide a useful sourcebook and guide to academics, practitioners and activists involved with these issues.

The connection between economic growth and the quality of the environment is a popular subject. Since the second half of the 1980s, there has been an increasingly frequent use of the term "sustainable development," to refer to the preoccupation that the production of goods and services may decrease standards of living. It is natural to analyze this question from the point of view of economic models, which may be helpful in at least identifying the main factors behind such preoccupations and perhaps in suggesting policy measures. Indeed, models are useful to discuss some relevant factors, like the structure of production of the economy, the type of preferences and goals pursued by agents, and the elements of uncertainty. This monograph will consider some of these themes: there will be a study of the analytical framework which can be used for the purpose of defining and analyzing sustainability, and some discussion of how to calibrate a restricted version of the model to empirical data. There will be also some analysis about which type of uncertainty should be incorporated into the model, and which objective functions may be useful for policy purposes. Also, there will be discussions about the key variables which should be included, and some description of a general framework.

Is stewardship a useful way of regarding our relationship with our environment - or is it a dangerous excuse for plunder? Is it possible for us to be effective stewards? Or are we irrelevant parasites? Or foolish virgins unprepared for the Master's return? The notion that God has appointed us to care for creation has a long history and has been taken over into secular thinking. But can we be responsible for something if we do not acknowledge an Owner? This book gathers together classical expositions of stewardship with criticisms of the concept and adds other contributions written especially for this collection, linked by a critical commentary from the editor, R. J. Berry. The authors include both religious thinkers and practical conservationists. The questions faced were sparked by a conference of scientists and theologians organized by the John Ray Initiative and continued in a consultation at St George's House, Windsor Castle, with papers from Robin Attfield (philosopher), Murray Rae (theologian), Calvin DeWitt (environmental biologist), and Jim Lovelock (biogeochemist). The essays presented here are not simply an intellectual pastiche; they are a distillation of ideas to challenge us how to treat our environment - whether or not we call it 'Creation'.

Presupposing no prior knowledge of philosophy, John Benson introduces the fundamentals of environmental ethics by asking whether a concern with human well-being is an adequate basis for environmental ethics. He encourages the reader to explore this question, considering techniques used to value the environment and critically examining 'light green' to 'deep green' environmentalism. Each chapter is linked to a reading from a key thinker such as J.S. Mill and E.O. Wilson.
Key features include activities and exercises, enabling readers to monitor their progress throughout the book, chapter summaries and guides to further reading.

This revised second edition highlights the opportunities for achieving cost savings and environmental improvements to enhance competitiveness in organizations of all sizes, with specific guidance for small businesses. The manual sets out effective and simple mechanisms to encourage participation and commitment from both staff and suppliers. It builds on the advice of the first edition, with a wide range of new case studies from different sectors, including retailers, hotels and hospitality, schools and educational institutions, airports and prisons, and plenty of office-based examples. A new chapter on environmental reporting considers international developments in environmental management, reporting and sustainable business, including the Global Reporting Initiative and the European Environmental Reporting Awards, with a link to DETR guidance. An extended chapter on energy and utilities provides an update on environmental legislation, government position and industry trends. An office waste chapter looks at examples of successful waste exchanges that save disposal costs to donors and purchase costs to recipients.

A clear, comprehensive treatment of the subject, Environmental Statistics with S-PLUS is an ideal resource for environmental scientists, engineers, regulators, and students, even those with only a limited knowledge of statistics. It provides insight into what to think about before you collect environmental data, how to collect it, and how to make sense of it after you have it. This book addresses the vast array of methods used today by scientists, researchers, and regulators.

Through its convenient showcase of information and numerous data sets posted on the Web, Environmental Statistics with S-PLUS shows you how to implement these methods using the statistical software package S-PLUS and the add-in modules EnvironmentalStats for S-PLUS, S+SpatialStats, and S-PLUS for ArcView. This survey of statistical methods, definitions, and concepts helps you collect and effectively analyze data for environmental pollution problems.

African American intellectual thought has long provided a touchstone for national politics and civil rights, but, as Kimberly Smith reveals, it also has much to say about our relationship to nature. In this first single-authored book to link African American and environmental studies, Smith uncovers a rich tradition stretching from the abolition movement through the Harlem Renaissance, demonstrating that black Americans have been far from indifferent to environmental concerns.

Beginning with environmental critiques of slave agriculture in the early nineteenth century and evolving through critical engagements with scientific racism, artistic primitivism, pragmatism, and twentieth-century urban reform, Smith highlights the continuity of twentieth-century black politics with earlier efforts by slaves and freedmen to possess the land. She examines the works of such canonical figures as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Alain Locke, all of whom wrote forcefully about how slavery and racial oppression affected black Americans' relationship to the environment.

Smith's analysis focuses on the importance of freedom in humans' relationship with nature. According to black theorists, the denial of freedom can distort one's relationship to the natural world, impairing stewardship and alienating one from the land. Her pathbreaking study offers the first linkage of the early conservation movement to black history, the first detailed description of black agrarianism, and the first analysis of scientific racism as an environmental theory. It also offers a new way to conceptualize black politics by bringing into view its environmental dimension, as well as a normative environmental theory grounded in pragmatism and aimed at identifying the social conditions for environmental virtue.

Smith's work offers a new approach to established writers and thinkers and shows that they justly deserve a place in the canon of American environmental thought. African American Environmental Thought enriches our understanding of black politics and environmental history, and of environmental theory in general. Because slavery and racism have shaped the meaning of the American landscape, this body of thought offers us fresh conceptual resources by which we can make better sense of our world.

The idea of ecological modernisation originated in Western Europe in the 1980s, gaining attention around the world by the late 1990s. At the core of this social scientific and policy-oriented approach is the view that contemporary societies have the capability of dealing with their environmental crises. Experiences in some countries demonstrate that modern institutions can incorporate environmental interests into their daily routines. Elsewhere, economic and political interests dominate development trajectories and environmental deterioration continues, challenging the premises of ecological modernisation. This volume brings together research on ecological modernisation practices around the world. Studies on Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, the USA, and Southeast Asia examine the applicability of this approach to advanced industrial countries, transitional economies and developing countries respectively. Authors critically examine the premises of ecological modernisation theory, assess its value for understanding past and present environmental transformations, and outline paths for designing future sustainable development. Taken together, the studies in collected this volume offer significant refinements, extensions and critiques of ecological modernisation theory and suggest important directions for future research on social and policy dimensions of environmental change.

Concern over the environment and what people are doing to it has put important questions on the moral and political agenda. One that is often asked in the West is whether we do indeed face a terminal environmental catastrophe in the foreseeable future. Less dramatic but still serious threats to the attractiveness and sustaining powers of the world in which we live are also important considerations. This book provides an accessible introduction to the radical challenges that environmentalism poses to concepts that have become almost second nature in the modern world, including: the ideas of science and objectivity; the conventional placement of the human being within the environment; and the individualism of convential modern thought. Written in an accessible way for those without a background in philosophy, this text examines ways of thinking about ourselves, nature and our relationship with nature. It offers an introduction to the phenomenological perspective on environmental issues, and also to the questions of what natural beauty is for the threat to it to play a role in practical decision-making.

The Law and Politics of Sustainability explores efforts made to address pressing environmental concerns through legislation, conventions, directives, treaties, and protocols. Articles explain the mechanics of environmental law, the concepts that shape sustainable development, case studies and rulings that have set precedents, approaches to sustainable development taken by legal systems around the world, and more. Experts and scholars in the field raise provocative questions about the effectiveness of international law versus national law in protecting the environment, and about the effect of current laws on future generations. They analyze the successes and shortcomings of present legal instruments, corporate and public policies, social movements, and conceptual strategies, offering readers a preview of the steps necessary to develop laws and policies that will promote genuine sustainability.

The Business of Sustainability is a core resource for policy makers, members of the development community, entrepreneurs, and corporate executives, as well as business and economics students and their professors. It contains rich analysis of how sustainability is being factored into industries across the globe, with enlightening case studies of businesses serving as agents of change. Contributing authors provide a groundbreaking body of research-based knowledge. They explain that the concept of sustainability is being re-framed to be positive about business instead of being tied to the old notion of a trade-off between business and society (that is, if business wins, society and the environment must lose), and they explore how economic development can contribute to building our common future.

Natural Resources and Sustainability explores how human needs and desires, from sustenance and shelter to recreation and travel, have spurred the consumption of Earth's material resources. Scientists, ecologists, and other expert authors present the historical impact of commercial activities (in industries as varied as fisheries, agriculture, energy, and mineral extraction), discuss the global distribution and use of renewable and nonrenewable resources, and focus on innovative approaches for the future. Readers will learn why renewal doesn't necessarily put a resource beyond harm and why the no-free-lunch adage applies to all natural resources.

After decades studying creatures great and small, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson had an epiphany: Darwin's theory won't fully prove itself until it improves the quality of human life in a practical sense. And what better place to begin than his hometown of Binghamton, New York? Making a difference in his own city would provide a model for cities everywhere, which have become the habitat for over half of the people on earth.
Inspired to become an agent of change, Wilson descended on Binghamton with a scientist's eye and looked at its toughest questions, such as how to empower neighborhoods and how best to teach our children. He combined the latest research methods from experimental economics with studies of holiday decorations and garage sales. Drawing upon examples from nature as diverse as water striders, wasps, and crows, Wilson's scientific odyssey took him around the world, from a cave in southern Africa that preserved the dawn of human culture to the Vatican in Rome. Along the way, he spoke with dozens of fellow scientists, whose stories he relates along with his own.
Wilson's remarkable findings help us to understand how we must become wise managers of evolutionary processes to accomplish positive change at all scales, from effective therapies for individuals, to empowering neighborhoods, to regulating the worldwide economy.
With an ambitious scope that spans biology, sociology, religion, and economics, "The Neighborhood Project "is a memoir, a practical handbook for improving the quality of life, and an exploration of the big questions long pondered by religious sages, philosophers, and storytellers. Approaching the same questions from an evolutionary perspective shows, as never before, how places define us.

'We - artists, thinkers, creators - have a responsibility to communicate the truth of the climate emergency. The world is shape-shifting and our culture must too.' This book is a guide to one hundred brilliant plays addressing the most urgent and important issue of our time: the climate crisis. The plays - drawn from around the world, written by one hundred different writers, and demonstrating a vast span of styles, genres and cast sizes - all speak to an aspect of the climate emergency. Encompassing both famous plays and lesser-known works, the selection includes recent writing that explicitly wrestles with these issues, as well as classic texts in which these resonances now ring out clearly. Each play is explored in a concise essay illuminating key themes, and highlighting its contribution to our understanding of climate issues, with sections including Resources, Energy, Migration, Responsibility, Fightback and Hope. 100 Plays to Save the World is a book to provoke as well as inspire - to start conversations, to inform debate, to challenge our thinking, and to be a launch pad for future productions. It is also an empowering resource for theatre directors, producers, teachers, youth leaders and writers looking for plays that speak to our present moment. Above all, it is a call to arms, to step up, think big, and unleash theatre's power to imagine a better future into being. The book includes a foreword by Daze Aghaji, a leading youth climate justice activist. 'This book is a kind of miracle, a thrilling compendium of plays that speak to the enormous environmental crisis of our time. Freestone and O'Hare have exquisite taste and brilliant analysis, illuminating plays I've never heard of, as well as plays I thought I knew. 100 Plays to Save the World should be required reading for everyone who believes in the power of theatre to move the world; I will certainly never plan a season again without referring to it.' Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director, The Public Theater, New York 'This book is dynamite. Through lively play analysis and accessible environmental know-how, it will galvanise theatre-makers to step up and artists to be heard. Theatre must play its part in the climate fight and this book shows us how.' Kwame Kwei-Armah, Artistic Director, Young Vic Theatre, London

This book examines how the European environmental movement, as part of an emerging European civil society, has impinged on the problem definitions and solution strategies in the European politics of the environment. Examining core case studies in European environmental policy - biodiversity politics (Natura 2000), the politics of genetically modified organisms, Trans-European Transport Networks, and the European politics of climate change - this study, written at the crossroads of social movement, public sphere and political discourse theory, argues that a social movement's most important feature is its 'cognitive praxis', its ability to successfully challenge dominant conceptions of realty and to create new green public spheres. It examines whether 'ecological modernization' is able to solve the tension between economic growth and environmental protection, and to what extent European environmentalism has contributed to the emergence of a green 'normative power Europe'.

This book of readings, meditations, rituals and workshop notes prepared on three continents helps us remember that environmental defense is nothing less than "Self" defense. Including magnificent illustrations of Australia's rainforests, Thinking Like a Mountain provides a context for ritual identification with the natural environment, inviting us to begin a process of "community therapy" in defense of Mother Earth. It helps us experience our place in the web of life, rather than on the apex of some human-centred pyramid. An important deep ecology educational tool for activist, school and religious groups, Thinking Like a Mountain can also be used for personal reflection. Thinking Like a Mountain has been made available through New Catalyst Books. New Catalyst Books is an imprint of New Society Publishers, aimed at providing readers with access to a wider range of books dealing with sustainability issues by bringing books back into print that have enduring value in the field. For more information on New Catalyst Books click here .