Sixty years ago, an upsurge of social movements protested the ecological harms of industrial capitalism. In subsequent decades, environmentalism consolidated into forms of management and business strategy that aimed to tackle ecological degradation while enabling new forms of green economic growth. However, the focus on spaces and species to be protected saw questions of human work and histories of colonialism pushed out of view. This book traces a counter-history of modern environmentalism from the 1960s to the present day. It focuses on claims concerning land, labour and social reproduction arising at important moments in the history of environmentalism made by feminist, anti-colonial, Indigenous, workers’ and agrarian movements. Many of these movements did not consider themselves ‘environmental,’ and yet they offer vital ways forward in the face of escalating ecological damage and social injustice.

A growing awareness of climate change and looming planetary crisis has put unprecedented pressure on the near future, leading to an increasing amount of fiction being set there. But what do these disparate works have in common, other than their temporal setting? And what can the imagination of the near future tell us about where we live now? The Near Future in 21st Century Fiction ranges across novels and films to reveal how our contemporary near future splits between two divergent paths. One seeks to retreat from climate change and the disruption it threatens to affluent lifestyles; the other tries to imagine new forms of community, and radical change, but struggles to locate a genre adequate to the task. It in this struggle, however, that we begin to glimpse the outlines of an emergent near future form: a revolution fit for the Anthropocene.

The interconnected themes of land and labour were a common recourse for English literary writers between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, and in the twenty-first they have become pressing again in the work of nature writers, environmentalists, poets, novelists and dramatists. Written by a team of sixteen subject specialists, this volume surveys the literature of rural working lives and landscapes written in English between 1500 and the present day, offering a range of scholarly perspectives on the georgic tradition, with insights from literary criticism, historical scholarship, classics, post-colonial studies, rural studies and ecocriticism. Providing an overview of the current scholarship in georgic literature and criticism, this collection argues that the work of people and animals in farming communities, and the land as it is understood through that work, has provided writers in English with one of their most complex and enduring themes.

Grand Winner of the 2014 Nautius Book Awards
Thoughtful observers agree that the planetary crisis we now face-climate change; species extinction; the destruction of entire ecosystems; the urgent need for a more just economic-political order-is pushing human civilization to a radical turning point: change or perish. But precisely how to change remains an open question.
In Earth-honoring Faith, Larry Rasmussen answers that question with a dramatically new way of thinking about human society, ethics, and the ongoing health of our planet. Rejecting the modern assumption that morality applies to human society alone, Rasmussen insists that we must derive a spiritual and ecological ethic that accounts for the well-being of all creation, as well as the primal elements upon which it depends: earth, air, fire, water, and sunlight. He argues that good science, necessary as it is, will not be enough to inspire fundamental change. We must draw on religious resources as well to make the difficult transition from an industrial-technological age obsessed with consumption to an ecological age that restores wise stewardship of all life. Earth-honoring Faith advocates an alliance of spirituality and ecology, in which the material requirements for planetary life are reconciled with deep traditions of spirituality across religions, traditions that include mysticism, sacramentalism, prophetic practices, asceticism, and the cultivation of wisdom. It is these shared spiritual practices that can produce a chorus of world faiths to counter the consumerism, utilitarianism, alienation, oppression, and folly that have pushed us to the brink.
Written with passionate commitment and deep insight, Earth-honoring Faith reminds us that we must live in the present with the knowledge that the eyes of future generations will look back at us.

It is often claimed by environmental philosophers and green political theorists that liberalism, the dominant tradition of western political philosophy, is too focused on the interests of human individuals to give due weight to the environment for its own sake. In "How to be a Green Liberal", Simon Hailwood challenges this view and argues that liberalism can embrace a genuinely 'green', non-instrumental view of nature. The book's central claim is that nature's 'otherness', its being constituted of independent entities and processes that do not reflect our purposes, is a basis for value and can be incorporated within liberal political philosophy as a fundamental commitment alongside human freedom and equality. Hailwood argues that the conceptual resources already exist within mainstream liberalism for a thoroughly non-instrumental perspective. Adopting a rigorous philosophical approach Hailwood tackles a wide range of themes across environmental ethics, including holistic theories, deep ecology, eco-feminism and eco-anarchism, as well as issues in value theory and political philosophy more generally. In making the case for liberalism's green credentials "How to be a Green Liberal" is a formidable challenge to recent green political theory and will be required reading not only for students of political philosophy but for all those interested in the natural world and man's relationship to it.

During recent years, there has been a growing awareness that a better understanding of human activities and the behavioural components of environmental problems is needed. This volume brings together psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, historians of technology and economics, and management experts to identify and examine the rules and motives that govern the environmental behaviour of individuals, households, organizations and society as a whole. Illustrated with case studies from Scandinavia, it shows how behaviours with negative or positive environmental effects are often performed without such consequences in mind. The book discusses how change towards positive environmental behaviour often conflicts with deep-rooted habits as well as exploring the importance for environmental practice of different everyday contexts. By presenting this multi-disciplinary analysis, the volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how behavioural change in relation to the environment can come about and how this can be integrated in the political framework.

Tourism has increasingly become a vital element in the economic development of the Indian Ocean region. This volume brings together leading tourism and economics experts from the region to discuss the wide range of problems and issues raised by the increasing significance of tourism such as: tourism and development; dimensions of and assault on rural and urban poverty; empowerment of women; women's property rights; access of the rural poor to services and resources; political and economic impediments to human resources development; management of energy and environmental resources; and electronic commerce and development. These issues and proposed policies are examined theoretically in the first section of this book, with comparative empirical case studies from Australia, Papua New Guinea, Botswana, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, the Maldives, Mauritius, the Seychelles, China and South Africa illustrating these arguments in the second section. A conclusion sums up the problems found in current policy and practice and puts forward innovative proposals and prospects for tourism and development in the region.

In this bold intervention, Cudworth and Hobden draw on recent advances in thinking about complexity theory to call for a profound re-envisioning of the study of international relations. As a discipline, IR is wedded to the enlightenment project of overcoming the "hazards" of nature, and thus remains constrained by its blinkered "human-centered" approach. Furthermore, as a means of predicting major global-political events and trends, it has failed consistently. Instead, the authors argue, it is essential we develop a much more nuanced and sophisticated analysis of global political systems, taking into account broader environmental circumstances, as well as social relations, economic practices, and formations of political power. Essentially, the book reveals how the study of international politics is transformed by the understanding that we have never been exclusively human.
An original work that is sure to provoke heated debate within the discipline, Posthuman International Relations combines insights from complexity theory and ecological thinking to provide a radical new agenda for a progressive, twenty-first century International Relations.

Throughout the tropical world, especially in South and Southeast Asia, tropical America, Africa and Oceania, there exists a range of forest garden farming systems. These are small, low-input, but productive and sustainable family units of highly diversified trees, palms, bushes and vines, with few conventional field crops or livestock. Providing a survey of these systems around the world and an in-depth analysis of the farms around Kandy, Sri Lanka, this book offers an economic and ecological description and evaluation of this ancient agroforestry system and its relationship to a wide range of global agro-development and environmental problems. Guided by a table that lists some 30 socio-economic and social criteria by which all farming systems can and should be evaluated, the book presents persuasive evidence supported by comprehensive references. It also examines historical and archaeological findings in order to assess the role these tropical forests played in the general adoption of agricultural farming.

No other European laws are so frequently violated as environmental directives. This informative and illuminating volume explains why member states have repeatedly failed to comply with European Environmental Law. It challenges the assumption that non-compliance is merely a southern problem. By critically comparing and analyzing Spain and Germany, the volume demonstrates that both northern leaders and southern laggards face compliance problems if a European policy is not compatible with domestic regulatory structures. The North-South divide is therefore much more complex than previously thought. Examining each country's capabilities of shaping European policies according to its environmental concerns and economic interests, the book debates the possible outcomes if the European Union does not come to terms with the leader-laggards dynamics in environmental policy-making. It will be a prime resource for anyone concerned with environmental policy-making and law, particularly within the EU, as well as those interested in environmental and political geography.

Environmental psychology is an increasingly important area of research, focusing on the individual and social factors responsible for many critical human responses to the physical environment. With such rapid and widespread growth, the main theoretical strands have often been left unclear and their scientific and practical implications have been underdeveloped. This essential and stimulating book contextualizes and critically analyzes the main theoretical ideas. It compares the different theories, assessing each one's possibilities and limitations, and demonstrates how each approach has been used for the development of knowledge of environmental psychology. The research area infiltrates a broad selection of disciplines, including psychology, architecture, planning, geography, sociology, environmental issues, economics and law. It also offers significant contributions to a wide range of policy evaluations. It will prove invaluable to academics and practitioners from across these disciplines, above all those in planning, environmental studies, human geography and psychology.

What is activism? The answer is, typically, that it is a form of opposition, often expressed on the streets. Skoglund and Boehm argue differently. They identify forms of 'insider activism' within corporations, state agencies and villages, showing how people seek to transform society by working within the system, rather than outright opposing it. Using extensive empirical data, Skoglund and Boehm analyze the transformation of climate activism in a rapidly changing political landscape, arguing that it is time to think beyond the tensions between activism and enterprise. They trace the everyday renewable energy actions of a growing 'epistemic community' of climate activists who are dispersed across organizational boundaries and domains. This book is testament to a new way of understanding activism as an organizational force that brings about the transition towards sustainability across business and society and is of interest to social science scholars of business, renewable energy and sustainable development.

Predictions about the success of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are pessimistic. It has now become commonplace to bemoan the scope, ambition, and deeply political nature of a convention that addresses issues ranging from ecosystems protection to the exploitation of genetic resources, from conservation to justice, and from commerce to scientific knowledge. Ten years after its adoption, how can we assess the difference that the CBD has made? Is it in danger of collapsing under its own weight or is it building the foundations of new patterns of relations between societies and nature? What achievements can we record and what challenges does it face? In this book, which is unique in its scope, diversity and the wealth of information it contains, contributors from a variety of academic disciplines tackle an issue of enduring importance to the protection of biodiversity and enhance our understanding of humanity's capacity to reconcile its various aspirations and halt the destructive path upon which it is set.

In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement. In The Democracy of Species Robin Wall Kimmerer guides us towards a more reciprocal, grateful and joyful relationship with our animate earth, from the wild leeks in the field to the deer in the woods. Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured through the decades, becoming the classics of a movement. Together, these books show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world.

Why care about the environment? Is the earth's climate really changing for the worse? What are CFCs exactly? And who or what is the WTO? What are the causes of environmental problems? Who are the main actors, and what are the main ideas and issues in international environmental politics? Which countries have the best/worst environmental record and policies?
The International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics is the essential reference source to enable all those with an interest in the politics of the environment - particularly students and academics working within political science - to answer these questions, and to explore many other related topics in international environmental politics. It will be welcomed as an essential teaching resource and a trusty companion to independent study.
Written by a team of international experts, the Encyclopedia is vital for fact-checking, provides authoritative initial orientation to a particular topic or issue and will serve as a solid starting point for wider explanation. With over 300 fully cross-referenced entries, many of which are followed with suggestions for further reading, the Encyclopedia includes:
* Country and regional entries, with country entries giving a concise overview of the history, main actors, issues and policies related to its environmental politics
* Normative and ethical dimensions of environmental politics, from animal rights, social and global justice to deep ecology
* Environmental movements, organizations, struggles and actors from local to international levels
* Issues in international environmental politics such as global warming, biodiversity, trade and the environment
* Prominent individuals (historical and current) who have inspired or been actively involved in international environmental politics - such as Mahatma Gandhi, Petra Kelly, Vandana Shiva and Aldo Leopold
* Central topics and issues in environmental politics - such as global warming, globalization, wildlife preservation, eco-taxes, energy production and consumption, sustainable development and the World Trade Organisation

Aldo Leopold's classic work "A Sand County Almanac" is widely regarded as one of the most influential conservation books of all time. In it, Leopold sets forth an eloquent plea for the development of a "land ethic" -- a belief that humans have a duty to interact with the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise "the land" in ways that ensure their well-being and survival."For the Health of the Land," a new collection of rare and previously unpublished essays by Leopold, builds on that vision of ethical land use and develops the concept of "land health" and the practical measures landowners can take to sustain it. The writings are vintage Leopold -- clear, sensible, and provocative, sometimes humorous, often lyrical, and always inspiring. Joining them together are a wisdom and a passion that transcend the time and place of the author's life.The book offers a series of forty short pieces, arranged in seasonal "almanac" form, along with longer essays, arranged chronologically, which show the development of Leopold's approach to managing private lands for conservation ends. The final essay is a never before published work, left in pencil draft at his death, which proposes the concept of land health as an organizing principle for conservation. Also featured is an introduction by noted Leopold scholars J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle that provides a brief biography of Leopold and places the essays in the context of his life and work, and an afterword by conservation biologist Stanley A. Temple that comments on Leopold's ideas from the perspective of modern wildlife management.The book's conservation message and practical ideas are as relevant today as they werewhen first written over fifty years ago. "For the Health of the Land" represents a stunning new addition to the literary legacy of Aldo Leopold.

How do we extend the "conservation ethic" to include the cultural links between local populations and their physical environments? Can considerations of human capital be incorporated into the definition and measurement of sustainability in managed forests? Can forests be managed in a manner that fulfills traditional goals for ecological integrity while also addressing the well-being of its human residents?

In this groundbreaking work, an international team of investigators apply a diverse range of social science methods to focus on the interests of the stakeholders living in the most intimate proximity to managed forests. Building on a series of criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management first tested by the editors and their colleagues in the mid-1990s, the researchers address topics such as intergenerational access to resources, gender relations and forest utilization, and equity in both forest-rich and forest-poor contexts.

People Managing Forests begins with an overview of concepts and measures of sustainability. Using examples from North America, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the book explores the overlapping systems that characterize the management of tropical forests. With rigor, insight, and a balance of quantitative and qualitative analysis, the contributors demonstrate that the diversity of forests extends to the cultures of their human inhabitants and the relationships they have with their environment. For forest managers, social scientists, and policymakers, the result is an approach to sustainability that is more accurate, complete, and humane.

People Managing Forests is a copublication of Resources for the Future (RFF) and the Center forInternational Forestry Research (CIFOR).

A TIMES AND TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Beautifully written, movingly told and meticulously researched ... a convincing plea for a wilder, richer world' Isabella Tree, author of Wilding 'By the time I'd read the first chapter, I'd resolved to take my son into the woods every afternoon over winter. By the time I'd read the sixth, I was wanting to break prisoners out of cells and onto the mossy moors. Losing Eden rigorously and convincingly tells of the value of the natural universe to our human hearts' Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun Today many of us live indoor lives, disconnected from the natural world as never before. And yet nature remains deeply ingrained in our language, culture and consciousness. For centuries, we have acted on an intuitive sense that we need communion with the wild to feel well. Now, in the moment of our great migration away from the rest of nature, more and more scientific evidence is emerging to confirm its place at the heart of our psychological wellbeing. So what happens, asks acclaimed journalist Lucy Jones, as we lose our bond with the natural world-might we also be losing part of ourselves? Delicately observed and rigorously researched, Losing Eden is an enthralling journey through this new research, exploring how and why connecting with the living world can so drastically affect our health. Travelling from forest schools in East London to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault via primeval woodlands, Californian laboratories and ecotherapists' couches, Jones takes us to the cutting edge of human biology, neuroscience and psychology, and discovers new ways of understanding our increasingly dysfunctional relationship with the earth. Urgent and uplifting, Losing Eden is a rallying cry for a wilder way of life - for finding asylum in the soil and joy in the trees - which might just help us to save the living planet, as well as ourselves.

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.

French Ecocritique is the first book-length study of the culturally specific ways in which contemporary French literature and theory raise questions about nature and environment. Stephanie Posthumus's ground-breaking work brings together thinkers such as Guattari, Latour, and Serres with recent ecocritical theories to complicate what might otherwise become a reductive notion of "French ecocriticism." Working across contemporary philosophy and literature, the book defines the concept of the ecological as an attentiveness to specific nature-culture contexts and to a text's many interdiscursive connections. Posthumus identifies four key concepts, ecological subjectivity, ecological dwelling, ecological politics, and ecological ends, for changing how we think about human-nature relations. French Ecocritique highlights the importance of moving beyond canonical ecocritical texts and examining a diversity of cultural and literary traditions for new ways of imagining the environment.

In 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio, the United Nations adopted the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to agree international measures aimed at preserving the vital ecosystems and biological resources on which we all depend. This is the official handbook to the Convention and presents all the most important information about the CBD, including a guide to the decisions adopted and to ongoing activities. It is an essential resource for all the governments, intergovernmental agencies, NGOs and conservation bodies and researchers working in this area. Included with the book is a fully indexed and cross-referenced CD-ROM containing all the relevant background material to the Convention, linked to relevant decisions and other sources of information.

Are profits and sustainability compatible? This book brings unique perspectives to this key debate by exploring the history of green entrepreneurship since the nineteenth century, and its spread globally in industries including renewable energy, organic food, natural beauty, ecotourism, recycling, architecture, and finance. The book uses the lens of the extraordinary and often eccentric men and women who defied convention and imagined that business could help save the planet, rather than consume it. The social and religious beliefs that drove many of these individuals are explored as the book looks at how they overcame huge obstacles to execute their strategies. The green entrepreneurs seen here are shown to have created new markets and industries, and driven innovations in sustainable practices, even at times when most consumers and governments marginalized the entire subject. The struggles of early pioneers appear to have been rewarded by the growth of environmental awareness among consumers, business leaders, and others in recent years, but the Earth's environmental health continues to deteriorate. If profits and sustainability have proved challenging to reconcile, the book argues that one reason was how they were both defined.

Ten years ago Blueprint for a Green Economy changed the face of economic and environmental policy. It made front page news and introduced the public as well as the professionals to the central role that the environment should play in economic and public policy decisions.Ten years on, David Pearce and Edward Barbier have written the sequel to show what has been achieved, how to consolidate that and what remains to be done. In the clear language which made the earlier book so accessible and influential, they examine the efforts to define and implement the concept of sustainable economic development, its relationship to the use of 'natural' capital and human welfare, and its influence on recent environmental policy debates. They show how far environmental concerns have been integrated into everyday economic decision making--through the valuation of environmental goods and services, cost-benefit techniques, indicators for sustainable development, and the use of market-based instruments for environmental policy making around the world.Yet large, new challenges exist. Global environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss and trade-environment linkages require greater cooperation towards new international agreements, institutions and distributive measures. The complex problems facing many poor economies such as deforestation, land degradation, overpopulation and resource exhaustion will demand the increasing use of environmental economics in development policy making. In all these areas, the authors demonstrate how sustainability can be brought from the periphery to the center of economic management.The book provides a blueprint for the start of a century in which our ultimatedependence on the environment will have to be at the heart of the business and policy decisions we take if we are to achieve genuinely sustainable development for economies all around the globe.

Although Green approaches to politics have had some practical successes in a range of different countries, the movement has lacked a fully developed and coherent political theory. In this unique study David Wells and Tony Lynch demonstrate that ecological understanding and environmental concern are not just consistent with notions of social equity and grass-roots democracy, but that a concern for these aims are the logical consequence of what might be called 'political ecology'. They begin with a critique of existing approaches to Green politics, with particular attention to the claims of 'deep ecology' and go on to develop an important examination of the relationship between economic and ecological styles of thinking. They conclude with a 'social commons' inspired revision of Lockean politics. What emerges is an important understanding of the tasks of politics: rather than focusing on 'foreground' issues of individual choice, the central political challenge of our age is with the management and provision of the background conditions (the ecological conditions - understood in the broadest sense) which allows the possibility of a reasonable life. The analysis shows a concern with environmental commons engenders equal concerns for social, economic and cultural commons, develops an account of how such commons can be effectively managed and relates this account to more traditional political themes of democracy, liberty and equity.