The World Commission on Dams (WCD) report (2000) Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making set a landmark in the ongoing controversy over large dams. Now that more than ten years have passed, one has to realize that the WCD norms matter. However, their real chance of becoming implemented relies on whether their core values, strategic priorities and guidelines are accepted by national decision-makers and are translated into official policies and practices. The book s major concern is whether the big hydropower states have improved their standards for environment and resettlement, and whether international standards are applied or exist only on paper.

The introductory and synthesis chapters present the methodological approach and discuss the findings. Other chapters analyze changes in dam policies in the big hydropower states Brazil, China, India and Turkey; the role of non-governmental organizations in advocating against the Turkish Ilisu Dam project on the Tigris River; the strategies of International Rivers and World Wildlife Fund for Nature in the global hydropower game; the policies of the German government and its positioning in the dam debate, and the engagement of Chinese actors in building the Bui Dam (Ghana) and the Kamchay Dam (Cambodia).

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This book investigates critical urban issues related to socio-spatial segregation, housing, daily travel, mobility of the elderly, etc. from the perspective of wellbeing. This is a collection of the latest research works by frontline researchers working in the fields of geography, urban studies, transport, and sociology. Drawing on theoretical and empirical explorations, collected chapters in this book connect mobility and wellbeing, bridge geography and health, and analyze the implications of mobility disadvantages on urban marginal groups' wellbeing. Research findings presented in the book are also highly relevant for practitioners and policy makers in the pursuit of improving urban livability since wellbeing, or quality of life, is increasingly considered as an important criteria alternative to income growth to evaluate economic, social and urban development.

The field of endocrine disruption or endocrine active compounds (EACs), which is just emerging and still controversial, is comprehensively covered by leading experts in Volume 3, Subvolumes L (the present volume, Part I) and M (Part II). The major classes of endocrine active chemicals are discussed, as well as methods for their detection and their association with health disturbances in humans and wildlife. The etiology of several of the human diseases associated with endocrine disruptors, e.g. breast and prostate cancer, decreased fertility and malformations, is still poorly understood, and the current state of knowledge is presented. Since hormonally active agents appear to have the potential of both adverse and beneficial effects, the evidence of health benefits associated with endocrine active compounds in humans is also presented. Basic chapters on the mode of action of EACs and on the etiology of the associated diseases facilitate the understanding of this complex subject for non-medical readers.

This book explores the relationship between families, firms, and regions and the extent to which these relationships contribute to regional economic and social development. Although family business participation in economic activities has been a common phenomenon since pre-industrial societies, and its importance has evolved throughout time and across spatial contexts, the book suggests that these factors have often been neglected in family business and regional studies. Taking this research gap into account, the book aims to deepen our understanding of the role family firms play in the regional economy. In particular, it explores two seldom studied questions. Firstly, what role do family firms play in regional development? Secondly, how do different spatial regional contexts shape family firm operations and performance? Family Business and Regional Development presents a model of "spatial familiness" and uses themes such as productivity, networks and competitiveness to shed new light on family businesses. Moreover, it approaches the juxtaposition between family business and regional studies to encourage the cross-fertilisation of ideas, theories, and research methods between the two fields. Bringing together leading experts in entrepreneurship, regional economics, and economic geography, this book will be a valuable reading for advanced students, researchers and policymakers interested in family firms, regional studies and economic geography.

Taking the view that aesthetics is a study grounded in perception, the essays in this volume exhibit many sides of the perceptual complex that is the aesthetic field and develop them in different ways. They reinvigorate our understanding of such arts as music and architecture; they range across the natural landscape to the urban one; they reassess the place of beauty in the modern environment and reassess the significance of the contributions to aesthetic theory of Kant and Dewey; and they broach the kinds of meanings and larger understanding that aesthetic engagement with the human environment can offer. Written over the past decade, these original and innovative essays lead to a fresh encounter with the possibilities of aesthetic experience, one which has constantly evolved, moving in recent years in the direction of what Berleant terms 'social aesthetics', which enhances human-environmental integration and sociality.

Regional areas are key building blocks of society in many countries. This compilation uses Australian case study examples to demonstrate how regional areas are uniquely well-placed to contribute to national goals in innovation, infrastructure provision, water and food security, environmental sustainability, industry diversification, healthy and liveable communities, and natural disaster preparedness and response. Each of these themes is examined in the context of using innovative approaches from regions to deliver outcomes that are nationally significant. Authorship is drawn from a balance of leading practitioners and academics to provide stories that are both engaging and rigorous. The case studies are contextualised by an analysis of regional advantage literature, discussion on the regional policy implications and lessons, and commentary around the key trends and drivers for innovation and regional advantage in Australia. The book provides a convincing argument that focusing on regional innovation and development offers significant benefits to a nation as a whole.

Uniquely bridges the aesthetics of imperfection with areas of philosophy, music, literature, urban environment, architecture, art theory, and cultural studies. Divided into seven thematic sections to offer a comprehensive study of how imperfectionist aesthetics connect to art and everyday life. As an interdisciplinary study, this book will appeal to a broad range of scholars and advanced students working in philosophical aesthetics, cultural studies, and across the humanities.

This short book provides a focused but comprehensive assessment of age-friendly initiatives in the UK based on in-depth interviews with the AF leaders in each locality to understand what being an AF community means in practice and how the schemes have developed and evolved, and the outcomes achieved. It advances knowledge on AFCC This is a timely contribution given the recent new WHO cycle on active and healthy aging Appeal to a wide range of disciplines, including: urban planning, nursing, urban studies architecture, nursing, tourism and human geography.

For decades now we have been told that we are living through a governance revolution. Gone are the days when government agencies and bureaucrats told us what to do and how to do it. We are no longer clients of the state but empowered citizens who are able to take greater control over our own lives and the activities of those who govern in our name. Across the world the prevailing narrative has become one of Good Governance, devolution, liberation, and freedom of expression. In policy fields as diverse as development planning, healthcare, and public transport a neo-pluralist rhetoric has emerged based on the principles of 'co-production' and partnership working. And yet at the same time a curious paradox is emerging. Whilst the prevailing zeitgeist is one of openness and citizen empowerment, this book will show that in reality new modes of governance are emerging in which state controls have actually been expanded into many spheres of life that were previously left unregulated. For some a new political economy of 'regulatory capitalism' has emerged and this, in turn, has ushered in unprecedented forms of state-led privatisation under which democratically-elected politicians have voluntarily handed over their powers, responsibilities, and resources to new corporate elites who promise to deliver services in more efficient and equitable ways. As the discussion will show, in reality the rhetoric of Good Governance has, therefore, been used to legitimate the wholesale transfer of welfare assets and services beyond the democratic control of state actors and the citizens that they represent. Privatisation has become a new utopianism that involves a revolution in ways of thinking about democracy, governance, and urban management, the implications of which will be felt by current and future generations.

This book celebrates the heritage of the distinctive Apatani community of the north-eastern Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh in India. It explores the fascinating indigenous knowledge of field and forest and a uniquely sustainable and enduring way of life that continues to evolve in the modern context. The book tells the story of how a material culture was shaped around bamboo and cane resources and nurtured by a strong community spirit and spirituality that transcended the human world and maintained an unbroken ethos of conservation through time It highlights the eco-sensitive lifestyle of this unique community and presents an in-depth analysis of the Apatani tradition of the exemplary use of natural resources. Through this engrossing detailed study, the author observes how bamboo houses are built in 3 days, fish cultivated in a rice field and a single river used to feed an entire community for millennia. She highlights the triumph of the human spirit in engineering a cultural landscape out of a swamp and how peaceful co-existence with nature can withstand the trials of time. Part autobiographical and powerfully personal, this book is a primer on sustainable living as practice. It will be of interest to researchers and students of tribal and Himalayan vernacular architecture, traditional bamboo-cane craft, urban ecology and geography, cultural studies, and sustainability. It will also attract general readership while being academically useful for anthropologists, sociologists, botanists, ecologists and environmentalists.

This book examines the growing trend for housing models that shrink private living space and seeks to understand the implications of these shrinking domestic worlds. Small spaces have become big business. Reducing the size of our homes, and the amount of stuff within them, is increasingly sold as a catch-all solution to the stresses of modern life and the need to reduce our carbon footprint. Shrinking living space is being repackaged in a neoliberal capitalist context as a lifestyle choice rather than the consequence of diminishing choice in the face of what has become a long-term housing 'crisis'. What does this mean for how we live in the long term, and is there a dark side to the promise of a simpler, more sustainable home life? Shrinking Domesticities brings together research from across the social sciences, planning and architecture to explore these issues. From co-living developments to the Tiny House Movement, self-storage units to practices of 'de-stuffification', and drawing on examples from across Europe, North America and Australasia, the authors of this volume seek to understand both what micro-living is bringing to our societies, and what it may be eroding.

Coastal Hazards in Bangladesh: Non-Structural and Structural Solutions provides a review of the study of Bangladesh's coastal region, an area whose location and physical geography present the prefect microcosm for the study of coastal hazards and for the development of tactics that are applicable to regions around the world. The book presents engineers, scientists, and planners with the necessary tools and planning solutions used to combat coastal vulnerabilities in Bangladesh. Divided into seven chapters, it begins with a critical overview of cyclone and storm surge disasters, focusing on both engineering responses and public preparedness programs to such events. In addition, engineering recommendations are provided for further reduction of their impacts, such as erosion, accretion, and land subsidence, and numerical models are introduced to assess flood induced hazard and risk, flood-induced design loads, and how to intervene in protecting key installations, infrastructures, and communities.

"Planning and the Political Market" argues that the enthusiasm for planning as an essential component of environmental protection is misplaced. Drawing on the experience of Britain and other Western democracies, the author uses public choice to explore the practical experience of land use planning as an example of government failure. The book opens by outlining the institutional focus of public choice theory, examining the central questions of market and government failure and the theoretical case for government intervention in the environment. Having explored the principal impact of planning the book goes on to analyze the institutional structures which have produced these policy outcomes. The analysis suggests that institutional incentives within the "political market" have frequently led to policies which favour special interest groups and public sector bureaucracy. The book concludes with an assessment of the potential for a private property rights, free market alternative to increase community involvement and access.

From the mid-1940s, state housing authorities in Australia built large housing estates to enable home ownership by working-class families, but the public housing system they created is now regarded as broken. Contemporary problems with the sustainability, effectiveness and reputation of the Australian public housing system are usually attributed to the influence of neoliberalism. Housing, Neoliberalism and the Archive offers a challenge to this established 'rise and fall' narrative of post-war housing policy. Kathleen Flanagan uses Foucauldian 'archaeology' to analyse archival evidence from the Australian state of Tasmania. Through this, she reveals that the difference between past and present knowledge about the value, role and purpose of public housing results from a significant discontinuity in the way we think and act in relation to housing policy. Flanagan describes the complex system of ideas and events that underpinned policy change in Tasmania while telling a story about state housing policy, neoliberalism and history that has resonance for many other places and times. In the process, she shows that the story of public housing is more complicated than the taken-for-granted neoliberal narrative and that this finding has real significance for the dilemmas in public housing policy that face us in the here and now.

The twenty-first century has so far been characterized by ongoing realignments in the organization of the economy around housing and real estate. Markets have boomed and bust and boomed again with residential property increasingly a focus of wealth accumulation practices. While analyses have largely focussed on global flows of capital and large institutions, families have served as critical actors. Housing properties are family goods that shape how members interact, organise themselves, and deal with the vicissitudes of everyday economic life. Families have, moreover, increasingly mobilized around their homes as assets, aligning household transitions and practices towards the accumulation of property wealth. The capacities of different families to realise this, however, are highly uneven with housing conditions becoming increasingly central to growing inequalities and processes of social stratification. This book addresses changing relationships between families and their homes over the latest period of neo-liberalization. The book confronts how transformations in households, life-course transitions, kinship and intergenerational relations shape, and are being shaped by, the shifting role of property markets in social and economic processes. The chapters explore this in terms of different aspects of home, family life and socioeconomic change across varied national contexts.

This monograph focuses on a variety of topics related to reconstruction and restoration in post-tsunami conditions. Aspects such as coastal engineering, early warning systems and technological approaches, urban planning and settlements relocation, socio-economic redevelopment and policy, coastal ecosystems and agricultural redevelopment as well as pollution assessment are included. The reader will benefit from the various case-studies drawn from a number of countries hit by the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean and the Great East Earthquake and Tsunami of March 2011 in Japan. This book will appeal to scientists and scholars, decision makers, students and practitioners interested in post-tsunami reconstruction and restoration processes.

Environmental laws and regulations are extremely complex and difficult to understand. In order to comply with them, they need to be explained in layperson's terms. This handbook identifies many changes in regulations and recommends ways to apply and implement them. Containing the latest environmental information, this volume addresses environmental compliance with air and provides a historical perspective to help follow the logical growth and increased complexity of air regulations through time. Structured as a "step-by-step how-to" book, readers will find real-life examples for the most important aspects of language, permit terms, demonstrating compliance, and organization for air projects. Features: Identifies all air pollution control regulations and the requirements of any air pollution control permits available up to date. Answers in depth all practical questions that arise when working on compliance projects in a "how to" method. Addresses a wider spectrum of issues that go beyond chemical-based contamination and environmental regulations and examines the impacts of climate change Includes many real-life examples from industry and institutions that comply with air quality regulations and air pollution control permits It is global in coverage and very useful to companies that have expanded operations outside their country of origin.

1. Focuses on all water pollution control regulations and the requirements of any water pollution control permits available up to date. 2. Answers in depth all practical questions that arise when working on compliance projects in a "how to" method. 3. Addresses a wider spectrum of issues that go beyond chemical-based contamination and environmental regulations and examines the impacts of climate change. 4. Includes many real-life examples and case studies from industry and institutions that comply with water quality regulations. 5. It is global in coverage and very useful to companies that have expanded operations outside their country of origin.

1. Explores all sustainability related concepts and regulations and the requirements of any control permits available up to date. 2. Answers in depth all practical questions that arise when working on compliance projects for future requirements. 3. Addresses a wider spectrum of sustainability issues that go beyond chemical-based contamination and environmental regulations and examines the impacts of climate change. 4. Includes many real-life examples and case studies from industry and institutions that comply with sustainability regulations. 5. It is global in coverage and very useful to companies that plan to expand operations outside their country and are interested in future regulations.

This book examines regional responses to marginality by highlighting social innovation, local capacity and new path formations in what are often seen as economically weak regions where policy and institutional considerations play a key role. Divided into three parts, it covers a wide range of topics related to geographical marginality from various angles, on both regional and local scales. The first part focuses on the role of social innovation and illustrates the themes of social innovation and new localism, local revitalization and social entrepreneurship. The second part then addresses the issues of economic responses, valorization, resource use and local action in response to marginalization. Lastly, the third part explores various policies and measures taken to respond to marginality and intensify regional development in marginal areas.

Based on extended fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2019, this book aims to answer a simple question: What is the meaning of home for people living in vernacular settlements in rural China? This question is particularly potent since rural China has experienced rapid and fundamental changes in the twenty-first century under the influences of national policies such as "Building a New Socialist Countryside" enacted in 2006 and "Rural Revitalization" announced in 2018. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, building surveys, archival research, and over 600 photographs taken by residents along with their life stories, this book uncovers the meanings of home from rural residents' perspectives, who belong to a social group that is underrepresented in scholarship and underserved in modern China. In other words, this study empowers rural residents by giving them voice. This book links the concepts of place, home, and tradition into an overarching argument: The meaning of home rests on the ideas of tradition, including identity, consanguinity, collectivity, social relations, land ownership, and rural lifestyle. The Introduction and Chapter 4 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Smart Cities and Homes: Key Enabling Technologies explores the fundamental principles and concepts of the key enabling technologies for smart cities and homes, disseminating the latest research and development efforts in the field through the use of numerous case studies and examples. Smart cities use digital technologies embedded across all their functions to enhance the wellbeing of citizens. Cities that utilize these technologies report enhancements in power efficiency, water use, traffic congestion, environmental protection, pollution reduction, senior citizens care, public safety and security, literacy rates, and more. This book brings together the most important breakthroughs and advances in a coherent fashion, highlighting the interconnections between the works in different areas of computing, exploring both new and emerging computer networking systems and other computing technologies, such as wireless sensor networks, vehicle ad hoc networks, smart girds, cloud computing, and data analytics and their roles in creating environmentally friendly, secure, and prosperous cities and homes. Intended for researchers and practitioners, the book discusses the pervasive and cooperative computing technologies that will perform a central role for handling the challenges of urbanization and demographic change.

This book provides a concise and up-to-date overview of environmental noise control issues, utilizing specific case studies from India to help explore noise mapping and monitoring, impact analysis, and policy, among other relevant topics. The book provides an extensive review of recent studies, including references, and describes the latest noise monitoring structures. It also addresses heretofore under-emphasized topics, including but not limited to acoustic metrology, Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) techniques, and sound insulation utilizing passive control strategies.

--The first edition is an essential reading for planning students as it is the only text available that focuses on planning law and practice in Northern Ireland. --Updated to address consequences of BREXIT, the impact of COVID-19 on planning procedures, and the emergence of Local Development Plans within the new 2-tier planning system of Northern Ireland

Territory and scale have been some of the most relevant topics in recent political science, but do we know enough about cooperation between local governments? How we think about local government has changed significantly and requires us to be equipped with new epistemological gear, considering more variables and social functions of local government than before. For instance, is inter-municipal cooperation a special arrangement? The answer is certainly positive, not as a consequence of its nature when compared to other alternatives of policy coordination and service delivery, but because it captures almost every facet of the complexity of contemporary territorial governance. Bringing relevant case-studies, previous research, and available literature together, this book will help researchers, students and practitioners with these ideas. The author provides comprehensive information about inter-municipal cooperation and identifies the main gaps in contemporary research.