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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > General
If there is one area of business education that requires out-of-the-box, creative thinking it is sustainability. Business sustainability, because of its relative newness (and hence uncertainty), its dependence on interdisciplinary thinking, its need to work with different stakeholders and its non-traditional operating approaches, demands that we train our managers in wholly new ways. This need for new and non-traditional teaching approaches is reflected in this collection of unorthodox teaching pedagogies. The underlying philosophy behind them is that deep learning for sustainability needs ultimately to be experiential: that is, learning while doing rather than a passive absorption of facts and figures. While much of the underlying theory of sustainability may be taught using more traditional lecture and reading approaches, the implementation of true business sustainability requires students to experiment - to win and lose - while grappling with the myriad challenges and frustrations posed by sustainability: the same challenges and frustrations, one might add, that companies intent on implementing sustainability face on a daily basis in the world in which they operate. The aim is to create a learning environment where students themselves take control over their own learning. This book - a companion volume to Teaching Business Sustainability 1: From Theory to Practice (Greenleaf Publishing, 2004) - focuses on four main categories of experiential pedagogy: case studies, hands-on exercises, role-play simulations and active learning teaching exercises. It includes contributions from a range of experts in global sustainability education who provide their expertise with class-hardened teaching materials. Teaching Business Sustainability 2 will be an invaluable resource both for educators working in a wide range of academic disciplines, looking for inspiration and guidance on how to teach business sustainability, as well as for organisations looking to reinvigorate internal management education programmes to factor in corporate responsibility and sustainability issues.
This book contains an edited version of the lectures and selected contributions presented during the Advanced Summer Institute on "Product Engineering: Eco-Design, Technologies and Green Energy" organized at the st Transilvania University of Brasov (Romania) in the period 14-21 of July 2004. The Advanced Summer Institute (ASI) was organized in the framework of the European FP5 funded project "ADEPT - Advanced computer aided Design of Ecological Products and Technologies integrating green energy sources" and was devoted to the Product Engineering field, with particular attention to the aspects related to the environmentally conscious design and green energy sources. The objective of the ASI was to create the framework for meeting of leading scientists with PhD holders and advanced PhD students carrying out research in the field of Eco-Design, CAD, Simulation technologies, Robotics, Manufacturing and green energy sources. The aim was to create conditions for high level training through a series of 15 invited lectures presented by world reputed scientists, as well as to give possibilities for young researchers to present their achievements and to establish professional contacts. The ASI was seen also as an opportunity for academics, practitioners and consultants from Europe and elsewhere who are involved in the study, management, development and implementation of product engineering principles in the learning and teaching sectors, as well as professionals to come together and share ideas on projects and examples of best practice.
** Major new textbook on all aspects of environmental principles and policies by renowned author and lecturer Sharon Beder ** Critical and interdisciplinary approach to analysis of environmental problems, including social, equity and market-based perspectives, covering climate change, pollution, fisheries and water ** Ideal course text for environmental studies, politics, business and related fields, with comprehensive international coverage, boxed cases and further reading for each chapter-provides a challenging approach for students This textbook takes a holistic, interdisciplinary and analytical approach to the development, implementation and impact of environmental policies that govern our relationship with the environment. It provides comprehensive coverage and clear explanation of principles including sustainability, the precautionary principle, public participation, equity and polluters pays. It also covers how principles are applied in real life to a range of issues from persistent chemical pollution to climate change to fishing rights and watershed usage as well as full coverage of economic approaches--including cost-benefit analysis and emissions, pollution, and ecosystem services trading.Environmental Principles and Policies is easily accessible, using non-technical language throughout, and--in what sets it apart form others on environmental policy-making--it takes a critical and interdisciplinary approach. It does not set out policies in a descriptive or prescriptive way, but analyzes and evaluates policy options from a variety of perspectives. This enables readers to gain a thorough grasp of important principles and current policies, as well as demonstrating how principlescan be used to critical assess environmental policies.
- Bridges history, theory, design, construction, technology, and sensory experience by means of digital simulations that enhance the assessment and values of our material choices - Uses the work of Aalto and selected contemporary architects, along with computer modeling software, to showcase the importance of comprehensive design - Offers an expanded reading of Aalto's approach towards building technology and how these impacted choices in choosing material and form for culture and environment - Includes 80 black and white illustrations
Increasingly used to represent climatic, biogeochemical, and ecological systems, computer modeling has become an important tool that should be in every environmental professional's toolbox. Environmental Modeling: A Practical Introduction is just what it purports to be, a practical introduction to the various methods, techniques, and skills required for computerized environmental modeling. Exploring the broad arena of environmental modeling, the book demonstrates how to represent an environmental problem in conceptual terms, formalize the conceptual model using mathematical expressions, convert the mathematical model into a program that can be run on a desktop or laptop computer, and examine the results produced by the computational model. Equally important, the book imparts skills that allow you to develop, implement, and experiment with a range of computerized environmental models. The emphasis is on active engagement in the modeling process rather than on passive learning about a suite of well-established models. The author takes a practical approach throughout, one that does not get bogged down in the details of the underlying mathematics and that encourages learning through "hands on" experimentation. He provides a set of software tools and data sets that you can use to work through the various examples and exercises presented in each chapter, as well as presentational material and handouts for course tutors. Comprehensive and up-to-date, the book discusses how computational models can be used to represent environmental systems and illustrates how such models improve understanding of the ways in which environmental systems function.
A journey into the world of carbon, the most versatile element on the planet, by the New York Times bestselling author Paul Hawken. Carbon is the only element that animates the entirety of the living world. Though comprising a tiny fraction of Earth’s composition, our planet is lifeless without it. Yet it is maligned as the driver of climate change, scorned as an errant element blamed for the possible demise of civilization. Here, Paul Hawken looks at the flow of life through the lens of carbon. Embracing a panoramic view of carbon’s omnipresence, he explores how this ubiquitous and essential element extends into every aperture of existence and shapes the entire fabric of life. Hawken charts a course across our planetary history, guiding us into the realms of plants, animals, insects, fungi, food, and farms to offer a new narrative for embracing carbon’s life-giving power and its possibilities for the future of human endeavor. In this stirring, hopeful, and deeply humane book, Hawken illuminates the subtle connections between carbon and our collective human experience and asks us to see nature, carbon, and ourselves as exquisitely intertwined—inseparably connected.
Proceedings of the ISPRA-Course Held at the Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy, October 21-25, 1985, in Collaboration with EuReDatA
Challenging Nobel economics laureate Theodore W. Schultz, Dr Zhou, in this comparative and path-breaking work, presents a new model for private land ownership or possession to overcome inefficient land-holding, increase farm competitiveness, realize food self-sufficiency and eliminate poverty. He aims to consolidate and enlarge fragmented small farms persisting in Asia, the Pacific, Africa, Latin America, and Central, Eastern and Southern Europe; and to help preserve small farmers, while strengthening large farmers, in the USA, OECD and EU. He introduces the means to facilitate the transition of collectively operated large farms in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia; promote EU enlargement; to prevent food overproduction; and to improve the environment. He also analyzes China's experience with public land ownership and makes important contributions to both new institutional economics and evolutionary political economy.
There is a complex relationship between the environment and the development of tourism, which this book discusses in a thorough and informative manner. Specialists from several disciplines pay attention to the challenges of sustainable tourism, devoting their full attention to cultural, regional and policy issues. This is a revised edition that has been expanded to 22 contributions, with inclusion of the cultural element. All chapters have been updated to include new data and information added to the existing body of literature in the last 7 years. It includes new developments and new insights into the relationship between tourism and the environment. An invaluable sequel to the first edition.
In 2000, various UN organizations launched a collaborative effort to assess the vulnerability of groundwater in several African cities. The project addressed the issue of aquifer vulnerability and the protection of groundwater quality. This book is a collection of thirty peer-reviewed papers on the topic, and provides a glimpse of the situation across the continent. The book begins with a broad overview of the situation in Africa, highlighting topics of special significance to the continent and presenting a variety of country perspectives. The subsequent papers provide specific case studies, introducing a range of diverse hydrogeological settings, with associated pollution sources, their causes and consequences. Methodologies for understanding impacts and for improving the situation are considered, with a view to the challenges ahead. The book will provide valuable reference and insight to professionals and decision-makers confronted with a wide diversity of challenges, including groundwater quality management in areas of rapid urbanisation in Africa and other developing areas.
Blom's hypothesis is forceful, and has the potential to be both frightening and, if you hold it up to the light at just the right angle, a little optimistic. The idea can be put like this: climate change changes everything' John Lanchester, New Yorker In this innovative and compelling work of environmental history, Philipp Blom chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, a crisis that would transform the entire social and political fabric of Europe. While hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, by the end of the sixteenth century the temperature plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbours were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and 'frost fairs' were erected on a frozen Thames - with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city. Recounting the deep legacy and sweeping consequences of this 'Little Ice Age', acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had ineradicably changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, Blom brilliantly shows how they also gave rise to the growth of European cities, the appearance of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment. A sweeping examination of how a society responds to profound and unexpected change, Nature's Mutiny will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.
This volume constitutes the papers and discussions from a symposium on "Societal Risk Assessment: How Safe is Safe Enough?" held at the General Motors Research Laboratories on October 8-9, 1979. This symposium was the twenty-fourth in an annual series sponsored by the Research Laboratories. Initi ated in 1957, these symposia have as their objective the promotion of the interchange ofknowledge among specialists from many allied disciplines in rapidly developing or changing areas ofscience or technology. Attendees characteristically represent the academic, government, and industrial institutions that are noted for their ongoing activities in the particular area of interest. The objective of this symposium was to develop a balanced view of the current status of societal risk assessment's role in the public policy process and then to establish, if possible, future directions of research. Accordingly, the symposium was structured in two dimensions; certainty versus uncertainty and the subjective versus the objective. Furthermore, people representing extremely diverse discip lines concerned with the perception, quantification, and abatement of risks were brought together to provide an environment that stimulated the exchange of ideas and experiences. The keys to this exchange were the invited papers, arranged into four symposium sessions. These papers appear in this volume in the order of their presentation. The discussions that in turn followed from the papers are also included."
Where does all the time go? Despite the burgeoning army of machines designed to save us time - from cars and aeroplanes to dishwashers and microwaves - we don't seem to have any more of it on our hands. We simply fill the space we clear with more things to do - consuming more, spending more - and then look around for new ways of saving time. And so we spiral onwards, upwards, ever faster. Being busy has become a habit, and a habit that gives us high status - busy people are important people. The business of business is busy-ness. We are moving from a world in which the big eats the small, to a world where the fast eats the slow. But the fallout from a society hooked on speed is everywhere. It's affecting our health: 60 per cent of the adult population in the UK report that they suffer from stress, and more than half of these say that this has worsened over the last 12 months. It's affecting our family life, with a quarter of British families sharing a meal together only once a month. And it affects our environment too: air travel is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions, accelerating climate change as we speed around the world. And the faster we live, the faster we consume, the faster we waste energy and the faster we pollute the planet. The faster we seem to be running out of time. Is there something fundamentally wrong with the structure and values of this high-speed society? What are we running from and what are we running towards? Sustainable development is all about time. It's about trying to safeguard the health of the planet, and the people it supports, indefinitely, unconstrained by time. The idea of time offers a novel perspective on what sustainable development is all about. Looking at issues affecting society and the environment through the prism of time conveys the urgency of the challenge and leads us to solutions we might not have thought of before. About Time, edited by the think-tank Forum for the Future, brings together ten of the world's leading thinkers and writers, including Will Hutton, Baroness Mary Warnock, Sir Martin Rees, Ghillean Prance, Jay Griffiths (the author of the bestselling Pip Pip) and Jonathon Porritt, from disciplines including biology, business, sociology, ethnography, astronomy, philosophy, politics, history and sustainability in a collection of intriguing essays exploring the issue of time and how it relates to the environment, economy and society. The first half of this collection looks at different dimensions of time - from the history of time as a social phenomenon and cultural notions of time, to cosmological time and the difference between human and machine time. These "think-pieces" are followed by a series of more practical, solutions-oriented contributions, looking at how we deal with time in different contexts - from the slow food movement and time banks to long-term thinking in politics and what we can individually do to cope with the speed society. Contributions are liberally interspersed with boxes and brief pieces offering bite-sized facts, figures and insights relating to time and our everyday lives. About Time is a high-profile collection aimed at creating debate about where the values of our contemporary society are taking us. It will foster reflective thinking about different aspects of time, using the concept of time to communicate and illuminate the idea of sustainable development and question our idolatry of speed. In doing so, it aims to inspire and help decision-makers in business, government and elsewhere to appreciate the challenges of sustainable development, and inspire individuals to create change in their own lives. For readers of No Logo and Longitude, this book provides a thought-provoking twist, bringing together time and sustainability in a refreshing, provocative and accessible way.
Vast changes in U.S. environmental policy from the New Deal through the Reagan administration have occurred that shed light on the nature of the American regulatory state. This book focuses on the sweeping transformation of regulatory policymaking that took place around 1970. The rise of social regulation and the advent of public interest movement during the 1960s and 1970s led to a significant change in policy outcomes, as the influence of governmental actors and political activists increased at the expense of business. By homing in on two specific areas, pesticide regulation and air pollution control, this study attempts to describe and explain these changes. This book is distinguished by its explanation of the transformation to the new system, its understanding of the way the new regulatory arrangements affect policy outcomes, and, most important, its explicit consideration of recent controversies in empirical political theory. The results provide an assessment of both the strengths and the weaknesses of the new institutionalism as a theoretical approach to studying domestic public policy in the United States. The regime framework developed here is designed to emphasize the multiplicity of forces behind public policy. This volume will be of interest to students of the American policy process, environmental policy and regulation, and theories of the American state, in academia, government, and the environmental policy community.
Data, Statistics, and Useful Numbers for Environmental Sustainability: Bringing the Numbers to Life is an accessible reference for researchers working in environmental and sustainability fields who need to communicate the latest data and statistics to reinforce their own research or message. The book compiles the most-needed numbers into one resource and covers a variety of relevant topics, including materials, energy, environment, city planning, electronics, and waste. This handbook is clearly indexed and full of comprehensive tables, making it easy to find answers. Researchers in environmental and sustainability-related fields will find it an invaluable resource.
Global rules are increasingly made without the direct involvement of states. This book explores what this privatisation of global rule-making means for democracy. Based on contemporary theoretical approaches to democratic global governance, it reconstructs three prominent rule-making processes in the field of global sustainability politics: the World Commission on Dams, the Global Reporting Initiative and the Forest Stewardship Council. The book argues that, if designed properly, private transnational rule-making can be as democratic as intergovernmental rule-making.
A collection of 18 papers from an international conference in London, July 1992, that survey the principles and applications of various operational technologies for the treatment of contaminated land. Some explain the principles behind a range of technologies; others use case histories to show how a
The fragile forest ecosystems in Latin America have long served domestic economic interests through timber production, mining, land resettlement, and cattle ranching. Over the past two decades, the demands on this natural resource base have been exacerbated by transnational commercial and political forces. These forces include MERCOSUR (the world's second largest customs union, composed of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay), the Kyoto Protocol, and international environmental organizations. As threats to the region's endangered ecosystems have grown, so have new approaches to stem the damage by incorporating local populations in decentralized systems of resource management. This volume examines several of the innovative strategies being tested in the Amazon rainforest. These attempts, involving multi-institutional responses to environmental threats, are showing initial results that offer cautious hope for the future. Contributors include Martin Coy (Geographical Institute, University of Innsbruck, Austria), Herv? Th?ry (Ecole Normal Superieur, Paris and Centre for Sustainable Development, University of Brasilia), David Cleary (Nature Conservancy, Brazil), Phil Fearnside (National Institute for Amazonian Studies, Brazil), Neli Aparecida de Mello (Centre for Sustainable Development, University of Brasilia), John Redwood (Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development for Latin America and the Caribbean, World Bank), Martina Neuburger (University of Tuebingen, Germany), Dan Pasca (University of Tuebingen), Judith Lisansky (World Bank), Sergio Rosendo (Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, University of East Anglia, UK), F?bio de Castro (Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change, Indiana University, and Nucleo de Estudos e Pesquisa Ambiental, University of Campinas, Brazil), and Larissa Chermont (London School of Economics and Political Science, and Federal University of Par?, Bel?m, Brazil).
The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies is a timely intervention into the field of global urban studies, coming as comparison is being more widely used as a method for global urban studies, and as a number of methodological experiments and comparative research projects are being brought to fruition. It consolidates and takes forward an emerging field within urban studies and makes a positive and constructive intervention into a lively arena of current debate in urban theory. Comparative urbanism injects a welcome sense of methodological rigor and a commitment to careful evaluation of claims across different contexts, which will enhance current debates in the field. Drawing together at least 50 international scholars and practitioners, this book offers an overview of key ideas and practices in the field and extends current thinking and practice. The book is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students for whom it will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines which converge in the study of urbanism, including geography, sociology, planning, and urban studies.
Fluorescent Probes, Volume 48 in the Methods in Microbiology series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters on important topics, including Hydrogel microarray technology as a tool for clinical diagnostics, The use of probes and bacteriophages for bacteria detection, Probes used with point-of-care microfluidic devices for pathogen detection, Methods for combining FIB/SEM with three-dimensional fluorescence microscopy using CLEM approaches, Probes and Microbes, Microbial signatures associated with cancers, Fluorescent Aptamers for Detection and Treatment of Pathogenic Bacteria and Cancer, Labelled and Unlabeled Probes for Pathogen Detection with Molecular Biology Methods and Biosensors, and much more.
Editorial ScopeThe Environmental Communication Yearbook is a multidisciplinary forum through which a broad audience of academics, professionals, and practitioners can share and build theoretical, critical, and applied scholarship addressing environmental communication in a variety of contexts. This peer-reviewed annual publication invites submissions that showcase and/or advance our understanding of the production, reception, contexts, or processes of human communication regarding environmental issues. Theoretical expositions, literature reviews, case studies, cultural and mass media studies, best practices, and essays on emerging issues are welcome, as are both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Areas of topical coverage will include: *participatory processes: public participation, collaborative decision making, dispute resolution, consensus building processes, regulatory negotiations, community dialogue, building civic capacity; *journalism and mass communications: newspaper, magazine, book and other forms of printed mass media; advertising and public relations; media studies; and radio, television, and Internet broadcasting; and *communication studies: rhetorical/historical case studies, organizational analyses, public relations/issues management, interpersonal/relational dimensions, risk communication, and psychological/cognitive research, all of which examine the origins, content, structure, and outcomes of discourse about environmental issues. Submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis for inclusion in volumes published annually. Audience Researchers, scholars, students and practitioners in environmental communication, journalism, rhetoric, public relations, mass communication, risk analysis, political science, environmental education, environmental studies, public administrations; policymakers; others interested in environmental issues and the communication channels used for discourse and information dissemination on the topic. For more information and guidelines for submissions, visit www.erlbaum.com/ecy.htm.
In the last fifty years our butterfly populations have declined by more than eighty per cent and butterflies are now facing the very real prospect of extinction. It is hard to remember the time when fields and meadows were full of these beautiful, delicate creatures - today we rarely catch a glimpse of the Wild Cherry Sphinx moths, Duke of Burgundy or the even once common Small Tortoiseshell butterflies. The High Brown Fritillary butterfly and the Stout Dart Moth have virtually disappeared. The eminent entomologist and award-winning author Josef H. Reichholf began studying butterflies in the late 1950s. He brings a lifetime of scientific experience and expertise to bear on one of the great environmental catastrophes of our time. He takes us on a journey into the wonderful world of butterflies - from the small nymphs that emerge from lakes in air bubbles to the trusting purple emperors drunk on toad poison - and immerses us in a world that we are in danger of losing forever. Step by step he explains the science behind this impending ecological disaster, and shows how it is linked to pesticides, over-fertilization and the intensive farming practices of the agribusiness. His book is a passionate plea for biodiversity and the protection of butterflies.
Clashes over environmental issues often leave government agencies, industry and activists locked in unproductive political or legal combat. Increasingly, players from all sides are conceding that there must be some other way of resolving environmental conflicts. This book examines that proposition by examining how and why conflicts occur and whether approaches to conflict resolution based on consensus building could be more widely applied. It differs from existing books by covering both environmental mediation and public participation and by analysing detailed case studies from the UK, the US and the Netherlands. In addition, the book explores official resistance to the wider use of consensus building, arguing that government agencies that have resisted participation and mediation cannot be dismissed as the problem but have to be part of the solution. The concluding chapter suggests general principles for effective partnership working concerning the remits, resources and the timescales within which agencies operate.
With contributions from a wide array of economists, ecologists, and government agency professionals, Economics and Ecological Risk Assessment: Applications to Watershed Management provides a multidisciplinary approach to environmental decision-making at a watershed level. It introduces the fields of ecological risk assessment (ERA) and economic analysis and discusses their application to the practice of watershed management. The book presents a general framework for the integration of ERA and economic analysis to improve environmental management in a diversity of watersheds. Focusing on real-world decisions, this book describes studies conducted in six U.S. watersheds where both ecological and economic analyses were needed. Decision contexts for these studies include negotiations to satisfy Endangered Species Act requirements, natural resource damage assessment, Clean Water Act permitting, and community development planning. The success of ecological-economic integration in each study, and the contribution to decision making, is critically examined. |
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