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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > General
This book addresses the need to develop a holistic approach to countering violence that integrates notions of peace, justice and care of the Earth. It is unique in that it does not stop with the move toward articulating 'Just Peace' as a human concern but probes the mindset needed for the shift to a 'Just and Ecologically Sustainable Peace'. It explores the values and principles that can guide this shift, theoretically and in practice. International in scope and grounded in the reality of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific context, the book brings together important insights drawn from the Indigenous relationship to land, ecological feminism, ecological philosophy, the social sciences more generally, and a range of religious and non-religious cosmologies. Drawn from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, the contributors in this book apply their combined professional expertise and active engagement to illuminate the difficult choices that lie ahead.
This book analyzes how transport influences the ecology of various regions. Integrating perspectives and approaches from around the globe, it examines the use of different types of engines and fuels, and assesses the impact of vehicle design on the environment. The book also addresses the effect of the transport situation in agglomerations on their environmental safety. Various types of environmental impacts are considered, from traditional emissions to noise and vibration. Presenting scientific advances from 7 European countries, the book appeals to experts, teachers and students, as well as to anyone interested in the environmental aspects of the transport industry.
The present book shares critical perspectives on the conceptualization, implementation, discourses, policies, and alternative practices of environmental education (EE) for diverse and unique groups of learners in a variety of international educational settings. Each contribution offers insights on the authors' own processes of re-imagining an education in/about/for the environment that are realized through their teaching, research and other ways of "doing" EE. Overall, environmental education has been aimed at giving people a wider appreciation of the diversity of cultural and environmental systems around them as well as the urge to overcome existing problems. In this context, universities, schools, and community-based organizations struggle to promote sustainable environmental education practices geared toward the development of ecologically literate citizens in light of surmountable challenges of hyperconsumerism, environmental depletion and socioeconomic inequality. The extent that individuals within educational systems are expected to effectively respond to-as well as benefit from-a "greener" and more just world becomes paramount with the vision and analysis of different successes and challenges embodied by EE efforts worldwide. This book fosters conversations amongst researchers, teacher educators, schoolteachers, and community leaders in order to promote new international collaborations around current and potential forms of environmental education. This book reflects many successful international projects and perspectives on the theory and praxis of environmental education. An eclectic mix of international scholars challenge environmental educators to engage issues of reconciliation of correspondences and difference across regions. In their own ways, authors stimulate critical conversations that seem pivotal for necessary re-imaginings of research and pedagogy across the grain of cultural and ecological realities, systematic barriers and reconceptualizations of environmental education. The book is most encouraging in that it works to expand the creative commons for progress in teaching, researching and doing environmental education in desperate times. - Paul Hart, Professor of Science and Environmental Education at the University of Regina (Canada), Melanson Award for outstanding contributions to environmental and outdoor education (Saskatchewan Outdoor and Environmental Education Association) and North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE)'s Jeske Award for Leadership and Service to the Field of EE and Outstanding Contributions to Research in EE. In an attempt to overcome simplistic and fragmented views of doing Environmental Education in both formal and informal settings, the collected authors from several countries/continents present a wealth of cultural, social, political, artistic, pedagogical, and ethical perspectives that enrich our vision on the theoretical and practical foundations of the field. A remarkable book that I suggest all environmental educators, teacher educators, policy and curricular writers read and present to their students in order to foster dialogue around innovative ways of experiencing an education about/in/for the environment. - Rute Monteiro, Professor of Science Education, Universidade do Algarve/ University of Algarve (Portugal).
With a bias for action, this book offers valuable insight into the origins of the much-celebrated Danish design tradition and how it can be employed to create design solutions to address today's environmental crisis using the planetary boundaries as positive creative constraints. Danish design has long been revered for its high-quality aesthetics, materials and craftmanship, encouraging sustainability without compromise. This book explores the lessons to be learnt from Scandinavian design ideals, introduces the philosophy and principles of circular economy, and showcases the potential power of combining circular economy and design in helping to mitigate the effects of climate change. It presents a range of case study examples across multiple sectors and includes interviews with Danish designers in architecture, furniture, fashion, digital design and industrial design, providing unique insights from some of the world's leading contemporary designers. Bridging theory and real-world insights and experiences, the book builds on the framework of the 4R’s The Circular Way: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Replace to encourage innovation through the replacement of environmentally damaging materials and business models. A must-read for product designers, industrial designers, consultants, business developers, sustainability professionals and students interested in learning how to design and implement circular, sustainable models into practice.
Especially written for contractors and small businesses carrying out small works, Spon's House Improvement Price Guide contains accurate information on thousands of rates, each broken down to labour, material overheads and profit.
Business Principles for Landscape Contracting, fully revised and updated in its third edition, is an introduction to the application of business principles of financial management involved in setting up your own landscape contracting business and beginning your professional career. Appealing to students and professionals alike, it will build your knowledge of financial management tools and enable you to relate their applications to real-life business scenarios. Focusing on the importance of proactive financial management, the book serves as a primer for students in landscape architecture, contracting, and management courses and entrepreneurs within the landscape industry preparing to use business principles in practice. Topics covered include: Financial management and accountability Budget development Profitable pricing and estimating Project management Creating a lean culture Personnel management and employee productivity Professional development Economic sustainability.
When dealing with environmental concerns such as climate change or pollution, accurate environmental monitoring is a prerequisite for undertaking any course of action. This book deals with recent developments and applications of environmental monitoring technologies, with emphasis on rapidly progressing optical and biological methods. Written by worldwide experts, this book will be of interest to environmental scientists in academia, research institutes, industry and the government.
Humans rank with the powerful forces of nature transforming Earth. Since the mid-20th century, population growth, industrialization, and globalization have had such deep and wide-ranging impacts that our planet no longer functions as it did during the previous eleven millennia. So distinctive is this collective human intervention that a new geological interval has been proposed; it is called the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is intriguing scientifically, fascinating intellectually, and deeply disturbing politically, socially, economically, and ethically. We must learn how to co-exist sustainably with the rest of nature in what is emerging as a new planetary state. To do so, we must first understand what "Anthropocene" means in all its dimensions. This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach, starting with an exploration of the Anthropocene as a geological concept: ranging across the physical changes to the landscape, to the rapidly heating climate, to a biosphere undergoing transformation. And what of the "anthropos" in the Anthropocene? While geoscience does not normally address political and ethical issues of justice and equity, or economics and culture, Anthropocene studies in the humanities and social sciences investigate the complexities of the human activity driving global change. Here the book looks at human history, both in the deep past and more recently, the politics and economics of growth spurring the Anthropocene, and potential ways of mitigating its cruel effects. Our fragile, still beautiful, planet is finite. The new realities of the Anthropocene will need our best efforts, across disciplinary divides, at effective hope and action.
This book describes the work of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) since its launch 1992. Mapping the evolution of its agenda gives insight into the development of modern marine science in the context of competing demands of stakeholders within and outside the organization. The opening chapter consider the challenges of marine science as a large scale, and places PICES in the contexts of internationalism and science-based resource management. They also lay out the organization's longstanding focus on the development of climate science and its applications. Subsequent chapters explore the pros and cons of national vs. international science, negotiating the nature of investigation and cooperation across scientific, political and institutional boundaries in the region; national perspectives on purpose, scope, and mandates; assessing two major initiatives undertaken to date; the challenges of incorporating social science into an organization of mainly natural scientists.
Aquatic ecosystem assessment is a rapidly developing field, and one of the newer approaches to assessing the condition of rivers and lakes is the Reference Condition Approach. This is a significant advancement in biomonitoring because it solves the problem of trying to locate nearby control or reference sites when studying an ecosystem that may be degraded, a problem that bedevils traditional approaches. Rather than using upstream reference sites in a river system or next-bay-over reference sites in a lake, an array of ecologically similar, least-exposed to stress sites scattered throughout a catchment or region is used. Once the reference condition has been established, any site suspected of being impacted can be assessed by comparison to the reference sites, and its status determined. The Reference Condition database, once formed, can be used repeatedly.
In the past two decades, research on environmental issues in East and Southeast Asian countries has mainly focused on existing institutional mechanisms of environmental management, the establishment of new environmental management structures, the introduction of incentives to improve natural capital and foster environmental protection, and the culture of environmental or "green" groups. Virtually no rigorous research has been directed into the nature and significance of the existing relationship between government and civil society in individual country studies, with specific reference to the environmental policy sector, or into how this relationship may be evolving. This book explores this connection in Singapore, and what causes it to evolve, through three case narratives. Its rationale is to address this gap in the literature from a "governance theory" perspective that focuses on state adaptation to the external environment and new forms of coordination and collaboration between government and civil society to tackle new societal problems. The application of the "governance theory" approach to specific case studies is itself a topic that deserves much greater study than what it has so far received.
Stakeholders such as environmental directives and customer demands for reducing environmental impacts of a product require innovative and environmentally improved products. Therefore a systematic approach and effective methods and tools are needed in the early phase of product development. The basic elements for optimized process management in the design department are described in this book. The book provides twelve easy to follow steps for implementing ECODESIGN in a company. It gives clear advice how to integrate environmental considerations into product design and development, and combines ECODESIGN with Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Communication. Chapters on Product modeling, Life Cycle Assessment, ECODESIGN tasks, Product Improvement and Environmental Communication use the previously developed ECODESIGN PILOT (www.ecodesign.at/pilot) and show its application to a real product example. The book comes with two web tools: one is the ECODESIGN PILOT, used to find measures to environmentally improve a product within a short time. The other is the ECODESIGN PILOT's Assistant (www.ecodesign.at/assist): an expert system, which helps to find the right improvement strategy for a product. Audience: This book will be of interest to environmental and sustainability managers, engineers in research and product development, to designers, environmental experts, and consultants, as well as to students working in this field.
When did man discover nuclear waste? To answer this question, we first have to ask if nuclear waste really is something that could be called a scientific discovery, such as might deserve a Nobel Prize in physics. In early writings within nuclear energy research radioactive waste appears to be a neglected issue, a story never told. Nuclear waste first seems to appear when a public debate arose about public health risks of nuclear power in the late 1960s and early 70s. In nuclear physics, consensus was established at an early stage about the understanding of the splitting of uranium nuclei. The fission products were identified and their chains of disintegration and radioactivity soon were well established facts among the involved scientists, as was an awareness of the risks, for example the strong radioactivity of strontium and iodine, and the poisonous effects of plutonium. However, the by-products were never, either in part or in total, called or perceived as waste, just as fission by-products. How and where to dispose of the by-products were questions that were never asked by the pioneers of nuclear physics."
Passivhaus is the fastest growing energy performance standard in the world, with almost 50,000 buildings realised to date. Applicable to both domestic and non-domestic building types, the strength of Passivhaus lies in the simplicity of the concept. As European and global energy directives move ever closer towards Zero (fossil) Energy standards, Passivhaus provides a robust 'fabric first' approach from which to make the next step. The Passivhaus Designers Manual is the most comprehensive technical guide available to those wishing to design and build Passivhaus and Zero Energy Buildings. As a technical reference for architects, engineers and construction professionals The Passivhaus Designers Manual provides: State of the art guidance for anyone designing or working on a Passivhaus project; In depth information on building services, including high performance ventilation systems and ultra-low energy heating and cooling systems; Holistic design guidance encompassing: daylight design, ecological materials, thermal comfort, indoor air quality and economics; Practical advice on procurement methods, project management and quality assurance; Renewable energy systems suitable for Passivhaus and Zero Energy Buildings; Practical case studies from the UK, USA, and Germany amongst others; Detailed worked examples to show you how it's done and what to look out for; Expert advice from 20 world renowned Passivhaus designers, architects, building physicists and engineers. Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 full colour illustrations, and presented by two highly experienced specialists, this is your one-stop shop for comprehensive practical information on Passivhaus and Zero Energy buildings.
This book provides a thorough understanding of the general principles of measurement for taking off quantities. An essential guide to any quantity surveyor, architect or engineer. Taking off quantities: Civil Engineering demonstrates, through a series of detailed worked examples from a range of civil engineering projects, how the measurement techniques are actually used.
Have you ever had to provide accurate costs for a new supermarket or a pub "just an idea...a ballpark figure..." ? The earlier a pricing decision has to be made, the more difficult it is to estimate the cost and the more likely the design and the specs are to change. And yet a rough-and-ready estimate is more likely to get set in stone. Spon's First Stage Estimating Handbook is the only comprehensive and reliable source of first stage estimating costs. Covering the whole spectrum of building costs and a wide range of related MandE work and landscaping work, vital cost data is presented as: costs per square metre elemental cost analyses principal rates composite rates. Compact and clear, Spon's First Stage Estimating Handbook is ideal for those key early meetings with clients. And with additional sections on whole life costing and general information, this is an essential reference for all construction professionals and clients making early judgements on the viability of new projects.
Though few now doubt the severity of the environmental problems faced by humanity there is still resistance from businesses, developers, architects, planners and government when it comes to making the step changes necessary to make our lifestyles sustainable. Based on the experience gained from their involvement in the pioneering Beddington Zero Emission Development (or BedZED) in London, and subsequent innovative schemes, The ZEDbook authors present a bold, coherent and refreshing vision of a low carbon future. In three comprehensive sections, The ZEDbook leads the reader from basic ZEDliving principles through building physics and architectural design details to a carefully selected array of informative case studies. The ZEDbook is a must-have purchase for anyone wanting to make communities and the built environment more sustainable.
This book provides a source of inspiration and a manual for designers, entrepreneurs and professionals who are looking into the practical application of product configurators. In this growing profession, there is a need for a book which focuses on the configuration process from a design perspective. The book delves into the practical application of configurators using case studies of selected firms that present their most significant works. It offers the reader tips, suggestions, technical details and critical issues which need to be considered, from experienced actors and pioneers worldwide, which include: Unfold, Belgium In-flexions, France Nervous System, USA Okinlab, Germany SkimLab, France Twikit, Belgium INDG, The Netherlands ZeroLight, United Kingdom 3Dimerce, The Netherlands 3DSource, USA Bagaar, Belgium MyCustomizer, Canada Combeenation, Austria
This book covers selected papers that were presented by
participants at a "Wetland Invitational" held in Columbus Ohio, USA
in May 2003. They are divided, by subject matter into four general
categories: 1. Restoration of a large river basin and delta; 2.
Long-term wetland restoration; 3. Creation of wetlands for
mitigation of wetland loss; 4. Conservation and restoration of the
world s wetlands.
This book pulls together major critiques of contemporary attempts to explain nature-society relations in an environmentally deterministic way. After defining key terms, it reviews the history of environmental determinism's rise and fall within geography in the early twentieth century. It discusses the key reasons for the doctrine's rejection and presents alternative, non-deterministic frameworks developed within geography for analyzing the roles played by the environment in human affairs. The authors examine the rise in recent decades of neo-deterministic approaches to such issues as the demarcation of regions, the causes of civilizational collapse in prehistory, today's globally uneven patterns of human well-being, and the consequences of human-induced climate change. In each case, the authors draw on the insights and approaches of geography, the academic discipline most conversant with the interactions of society and environment, to challenge the widespread acceptance that such approaches have won. The book will appeal to those working on human-environmental research, international development and global policy initiatives.
Dynamic Modeling of Environmental Systems is a primer on using models to understand environmental problems. With their many natural, economic, political, and technical aspects, environmental problems require a systems approach. This book provides an introduction to modeling concepts and applications that is specifically geared toward the environmental field. Sections on modeling terminology, the uses of models, the model-building process, and the interpretation of output provide the foundation for detailed applications. After an introduction to the basics of dynamic modeling, the book leads students through an analysis of several environmental problems, including surface-water pollution, matter-cycling disruptions, and global warming. The scientific and technical context is provided for each problem, and the methods for analyzing and designing appropriate modeling approaches is provided. An accompanying CD for both Macintosh and Windows computers contains a run-time version of STELLA modeling software with models from the text. While the mathematical content does not exceed the level of a first-semester Calculus course, the book gives students all of the background, examples, and practice exercises needed both to use and understand environmental modeling. It is suitable for upper-level undergraduate and beginning-graduate-level environmental science courses. The text is also useful for environmental professionals seeking an introduction to modeling in their field. About the Series: The availability of powerful, intuitive software for developing and running simulation models of real-world phenomena promises a revolution in studying, teaching, and thinking about complex problems that range from the functioning of a cell to that of an ecosystem to that of a national economy. The books in the series Modeling Dynamic Systems will promote the spread of "systems thinking" by integrating state-of-the-art modeling techniques with the theories and concepts of specific disciplines or interdisciplinary topics. The unifying theme of the series is the ease, power, and transparency of model-building.
Specifically written for contractors and small businesses carrying out small works, this second edition of Spon's Estimating Cost Guide to Small Groundworks, Landscaping Work and Gardening contains accurate information on thousands of rates, each broken down to labour, material overheads and profit.This is the first book to focus on this range of external work, including garden maintenance work on blocks of flats and individual houses, schools and sports fields, garden makeovers, laying patios and paths, small land drainage schemes on farmland, and small-scale local authority maintenance work.
In this book, editor G Rasul Chaudhry presents a wide range of topics authored by researchers at the cutting edge of biodegradation and bioremediation. The book includes recent research describing how microorganisms clean soil and water, and how they remove toxic substances. It also presents information on how genetics and molecular biological methods are used to improve the ability of microorganisms to degrade a variety of substances.
Multidisciplinary Studies on the Environment and Civilization draws on research from a diverse range of fields across the humanities, social and natural sciences to discover what is needed to develop an affluent, sustainable and resilient world for the twenty-first century and beyond. The contributions throughout this volume build and promote frameworks for an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability both in and beyond Japan. Utilizing research efforts from a broad range of fields such as zoology, biological anthropology and archaeology, these multidisciplinary studies are brought together to assess the impacts humans have had on the environment as well as the role of civilization, culture and heritage in environmental history. This book provides a truly multidisciplinary approach to environmental issues and will be of great interest to graduate students and researchers in fields such as climate, geology, plant taxonomy and marine science as well as those with an interest in Japanese history, archaeology, art and literature. |
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