This book offers a critical analysis of core concepts that have influenced contemporary conversations about environment-society relations in academic, political, and civil circles. Considering these conceptualizations are currently shaping responses to environmental crises in fundamental ways, critical reflections on concepts such as the Anthropocene, metabolism, risk, resilience, environmental governance, environmental justice and others, are well-warranted. Contributors to this volume, working across a multitude of areas within environmental social science, scrutinize underlying worldviews and assumptions, asking a common set of key questions: What are the different concepts able to explain? How do they take into account society-environment relations? What social, cultural, or geo-political biases and blinders are inherent? What actions or practices do the concepts inspire? The transdisciplinary engagement and reflexivity regarding concepts of environment-society relations represented in these chapters is needed in all spheres of society-in academia, policy and practice-not the least to confront current tendencies of anti-reflexivity and denialism.

Written by a career geologist with decades of experience in the field, North America's Natural Wonders provides everything the reader needs to understand the landscape. It guides readers through the most iconic, geologically significant scenery in North America, points out features of interest, explains what they are seeing, and describes how these features came to be. Presented as classic excursions to some of the best-known natural wonders on the continent, Volume I focuses primarily on Western North America, including the Canadian Rockies, California, the Southwest, Great Basin, and Tetons-Yellowstone Country. The trips detailed in this volume include stops at quintessential features, such as the glaciers and mountains of Banff National Park, Yosemite, the vineyards of Napa Valley, the California goldfields, the Grand Canyon, numerous parks in Utah, the geysers and hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, as well as many others. It also features discussions of lesser-known but equally interesting geologic formations and important information on accessing these sites. Features Addresses issues of interest, such as fossils, earthquakes, mineral sites, mining, and oil fields Lavishly illustrated with numerous colorful maps and breathtaking geological landscapes and their various features These five self-guided tours explain to the curious layman, student, and geologist what they are seeing when they look at a roadcut or a quarry and enhances the experience far beyond simple sightseeing.

Written by a career geologist with decades of experience in the field, North America's Natural Wonders guides readers through the most iconic, geologically significant scenery in North America, points out features of interest, explains what they are seeing, and describes how these features came to be. Presented as classic excursions to some of the best-known natural wonders on the continent, Volume II focuses primarily on Central and Eastern North America, including the Appalachians, the Colorado Rockies, Austin-Big Bend Country, and the Sierra Madre. The trips detailed in this volume include stops at quintessential features, such as the Shenandoah Valley, Carlsbad Caverns, Big Bend National Park, and La Popa Basin of Nuevo Leon and Coahuila, Mexico, as well as many others. It also features discussions of lesser-known but equally interesting geologic formations and important information on accessing these sites. Features Clearly explains the geology of these regions with an emphasis on landscape formation Addresses issues of interest, such as fossils, earthquakes, mineral sites, mining, and oil fields Lavishly illustrated with numerous colorful maps and breathtaking geological landscapes and their various features These six self-guided tours explain to the curious layman, student, and geologist what they are seeing when they look at a roadcut or a quarry and enhances the experience far beyond simple sightseeing.

This edited collection explores how narratives about the future of the Arctic have been produced historically up until the present day. The contemporary deterministic and monolithic narrative is shown to be only one of several possible ways forward. This book problematizes the dominant prediction that there will be increased shipping and resource extraction as the ice melts and shows how this seemingly inevitable future has consequences for the action that can be taken in the present. This collection looks to historical projections about the future of the Arctic, evaluating why some voices have been heard and championed, while others remain marginalised. It questions how these historical perspectives have shaped resource allocation and governance structures to understand the forces behind change in the Arctic region. Considering the history of individuals and institutions, their political and economic networks and their perceived power, the essays in this collection offer new perspectives on how the future of the Arctic has been produced and communicated.

This book integrates the analyses of organic carbon and carbonate accumulation in soil and lake sediment in a typical arid region of China that has experienced significant climate and land-use changes. It demonstrates that carbonate accumulation greatly exceeds organic carbon in both soil and sediment. It also shows that intensive cropping with sound land management in the arid land not only increases soil organic carbon stock, but also enhances accumulation of soil carbonate, particularly in subsoils. Carbon accumulation in the lake sediment increased between 1950 and 2000, after which it declined, and the authors explore how human activity and climate change may have caused the changes in carbon burial in the lake sediment. This book is of interest to researchers in a number of fields such as soil science, limnology and global change, as well as to the policy-makers.

This book discusses the problems and challenges of environmental-ecological conditions in Africa, amidst the current craze of economic growth and 'development'. Africa's significant economic dynamics and growth trajectories are marked by neglect of the environment, reinforcing ecological crises. Unless environmental-ecological and population growth problems are addressed as an integral part of developmental strategies and growth models, the crises will accelerate and lead to huge costs in later years. Chapters examine multiple emerging tension points all across the continent, including the potential benefits and harm of growing urban-based ecotourism, the trajectory of labour-saving technologies and the problems facing agro-pastoralism. Although environmental management and sustainability features of African rural societies should not be idealized, functional 'traditional' economies, interests and management practices are often bypassed, seen by state elites as inefficient and inhibiting 'growth'. In many regions the seeds are now sown for lasting environmental crises that will affect local societies that have rarely been given opportunity to claim accountability from the state regimes and donors driving these changes.

This collection is the first exploration into green crime in Mexico, offering a unique critique of the environmental problems facing Mexico today. Written by a diverse range of Mexican academics and practitioners from different career stages and various different disciplines, this edited volume exposes the corruption, power, and disregard for the environment through highly detailed and engaging case studies. The chapters are grouped into four categories: Environmental Degradation, Social and Environmental Justice, Wildlife Trafficking, and Non-compliance with Environmental Obligations, and are illuminated by rigorous original research. This book fills a substantial gap in knowledge about concerns that are important not only to the Mexican people and the wider region, but to anyone with an interest in the environmental issues facing the world today. To this end, the contributors hope to inspire other Mexicans to study and research green crimes as well as to influence scholars and practitioners across Central and South America who are facing similar environmental crises and challenges.

What causes Ice Ages? How did we learn about them? What were their affects on the social history of humanity? Allan Mazur's book tells the appealing history of the scientific 'discovery' of Ice Ages. How we learned that much of the Earth was repeatedly covered by huge ice sheets, why that occurred, and how the waning of the last Ice Age paved the way for agrarian civilization and, ultimately, our present social structures. The book discusses implications for the current 'controversies' over anthropogenic climate change, public understanding of science, and (lack of) 'trust in experts'. In parallel to the history and science of Ice Ages, sociologist Mazur highlights why this is especially relevant right now for humanity. Ice Ages: Their Social and Natural History is an engrossing combination of natural science and social history: glaciology and sociology writ large.

This book provides a critical examination of contemporary approaches to environmental regulation in the UK and the European Union. It also explores how regulation has evolved in response to a number of factors, including industrial development and improved scientific knowledge, while considering the radical next steps that need to be taken in response to existing challenges. Developments in Environmental Regulation draws its focus on the effects of risk-based approaches to the environmental regulation of business and industry, including its impact on sustainable economic growth. The book also considers the challenges and potential opportunities that surround the UK's withdrawl, or 'Brexit', from the European Union. This edited collection has been written by a group of highly experienced regulatory specialists whose insightful perspectives on key areas of environmental regulation are situated at the core of this work. This book will appeal to students and academics, policy-makers and environmental practitioners interested in understanding how environmental policy and regulation is applied and how it can be adapted to its political context.

This book presents relevant and timely endogenous procedures for addressing the challenge of transforming ideas into sustainable opportunities in Africa. It explores how Africa could be understood in the context of emerging global realities, providing alternative frameworks that will not just be participatory in conception and practice, but equally show a contextual workability for the varying aspects of the developmental enterprise in Africa. Despite having alternative and less cumbersome sources of funding, with commendable economic growth indices, and several economies among the fastest growing globally, African countries have been unable to transmute related opportunities into sustainable human development outcomes for majority of its citizenry. Over four rich sections the authors cover subjects ranging from environment and natural resource management, to governance, economy and sustainable development. The book continues with a section on Education and Human Development and a case study in transnationalism. The final section discusses crime, conflict and regional dynamics, including highly disputed topics such as forced migration and sex trade. This indispensable resource will be of great use to students and researches globally in fields such as sociology, anthropology, environmental studies, politics and economics with a focus on contemporary Africa, as well as to policy planners and human rights activists invested in the future development of Africa.

This study focuses on impacts of the environmental and socio-economic transformation on the indigenous people's livelihoods in Vietnam's Central Highlands recent decades since the country's reunification in 1975. The first empirical section sheds light on multiple external conditions (policy reforms, population trends, and market forces) exposed onto local people. The role of human and social capital is examined again in a specific livelihood of community-based tourism to testify the resilience level of local people when coping with constraints. The study concludes with an outlook on implications of development processed which still places agriculture at the primary position livelihood, and pays attention to human capital and social capital of indigenous groups in these highlands.

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.

Located in a narrow grassland corridor between the semi-desert and a mountain range in Northwest China, the research area Urumqi Region is despite its semi-arid climate in a relatively favourable hydrological situation. The nearby mountains provide water for settlements and agriculture, making human development possible in the first place. Due to the development of agriculture, population and economy during the last sixty years and the increasing water consumption, a demand- and population-driven water scarcity exists today and is expected to aggravate. At the same time, the effects of climate change and land use transformations on the hydrological system and the water availability are uncertain. This study evaluates the recent and future situation by combining a hydrological water balance model for the simulation of the water supply based on scenarios of climate and land use change with a socio-economic model for projecting the future water demand including predicted growth of population and economy.

This book investigates the new urban geographies of "smart" metropolitan regionalism across the Greater Seattle area and examines the relationship between smart growth planning strategies and spaces of work, home, and mobility. The book specifically explores Seattle within the wider space-economy and multi-scaled policy regime of the Puget Sound region as a whole, 'jumping up' from questions of city politics to concerns with what the book interprets as the "intercurrence" of city-regional "ordering." These theoretical terms capture the state-progressive effort to promote smarter forms of regional development but also the societal/institutional tensions and outright contradictions that such urban development invariably entails, particularly around problems of social equity. Key organizing themes in the text include: the historical path-dependencies of uneven economic and social development, particularly between Tacoma-Pierce County and Seattle-King County; current patterns of high-wage, medium-wage, and low-wage jobs; the emerging spatial and social structure of recent residential changes, especially with respect to class and race composition; and, finally, transit trends and new urban spaces associated with policy efforts to mitigate highway congestion and car-dependency. Greater Seattle, then, is mapped as a key US urban region inscribed spatially by the uneven search for a more sustainable order. Historically-sensitive, theoretically-informed and empirically topical, this book is of interest to scholars and students at all levels in regional planning, urban geography, political science, sustainability studies, urban sociology and public policy.

This book highlights both the diversity of perspectives and approaches to Arctic research and the inherent interdisciplinary nature of studying and understanding this incomparable region. The chapters are divided into four liberally-defined sections to provide space for dynamic interpretation and dialogue in search of sustainable solutions to the issues facing the Arctic. From governance to technology, scientific research to social systems, human health to economic development, the authors discuss fundamental questions while looking toward the Arctic's future. Whether the reader is well-versed in the history and complexity of Arctic policy or looking for an insightful introduction to the vast world of Arctic research, everyone will find answers that lead to new questions and even more discoveries in these pages, laying the foundation for tomorrow's discussion on the future of the Arctic. The Arctic's unique geographic and political characteristics pose questions for the international community, indigenous peoples, and economic interests not easily answered through traditional concepts. To that end, the Arctic Summer College has been engaging leading professionals, students, scholars, and policy makers from across the globe to exchange ideas and support further investigation into the Arctic. A joint venture between Ecologic Institute US and Ecologic Institute Berlin (Germany), the College participates at the annual Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland, and continues to be at the forefront of international collaboration in this critical area of economic, political, environmental, and humanitarian development.

This book asks how we are to understand the relationship between capitalism and the environment, capitalism and food, and capitalism and social resistance. These questions come together to form a study of food regimes and the means by which capitalism organises both the environment and people to provision its distinctive system of ever-expanding consumption with food. Political Ecology, Food Regimes, and Food Sovereignty explores whether there are environmental limits to capitalism and its economic growth by addressing the ongoing and inter-linked crises of food, fossil fuels, and finance. It also considers its political limits, as the globally burgeoning 'precariat', peasants and indigenous people resist the further commodification of their livelihoods. This book draws from the field of Political Ecology to approach new ways of analysing capitalism, the environment and resistance, and also to propose new solutions to the current agro-ecological-economic crisis. It will be of particular interest to students and academics of Environmental Sociology, Human Geography, and Environmental Geography.

A cultural history of one of Paris’s most fascinating and variegated areas, whose history can be summarized as ‘from riches to rags and back again.’ The Marais was the beating heart of fashionable Paris from the Middle Ages through to the time of Louis XIV, when the court’s move to Versailles marked the start of a decline in its fortunes. Thereafter it became a working-class, largely Jewish area, sometimes described as a ‘ghetto’, and by the early twentieth century was in a parlous condition from which it was extricated by the Paris City Council and the 1960s restoration plan of André Malraux (which did not go without criticism and opposition). Its most recent avatar has been as the best-known gay quartier of the capital, though again this identity has not been a straightforward or always easily-accepted one. The stress throughout will be on representations – literary, cinematic, autobiographical, photographic and in graphic-novel form – as much as if not more than the unfolding of historical events.

This edited volume explores the circumstances under which vulnerable communities can better adapt to climate and environmental change, and focuses in particular on the centrality of migration as a resilience and adaptation strategy for communities at risk. The book features important case studies where migration is being used as a risk management strategy in the Pacific, Sub-Sahara Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Its comparative analysis reveals common patterns in enhancing local resilience through migration across diverse regional, socio-economic, cultural, and political contexts. This book is a contribution to the global discussion about the future of migration policy, especially as climate and environmental change is expected to grow as one of the most pressing challenges of our time.

This book reveals the science and beauty of Mammoth Cave, the world's longest cave, which has played an important role in the natural sciences. It offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary treatment of the cave, combining insights from leading experts in fields ranging from archeology and cultural history to life science and geosciences. The first animals specialized for cave life in North America, including beetles, spiders, crayfish, and fish, were discovered in Mammoth Cave in the 1840s. It has also been used and explored by humans, including Native Americans, who mined its sulfate minerals and later African-American slaves, who made a map of the cave. More recent stories include 'wars' between commercial cave owners, epic exploration trips by modern cave explorers, and of course tourism. The first section of the book is an extensive description including maps and photos of the cave, its basic structural pattern, and how it relates to the surface landscape. The second section covers the human history of utilization and exploration of the cave, including mining, tourism, and medical experiments. Cave science is the topic of the third section, including geology, hydrology, mineralogy, climatology, paleontology, ecology, biodiversity, and microbiology. The fourth section looks to the future, with an overview of environmental issues facing Mammoth Cave managers. The book is intended for anyone interested in caves in general and Mammoth Cave in particular, experts in one discipline seeking information about other areas, and researchers and students interested in the many avenues of pursuit possible in Mammoth Cave.

The present book highlights studies that show how smart cities promote urban economic development. The book surveys the state of the art of Smart City Economic Development through a literature survey. The book uses 13 in depth city research case studies in 10 countries such as the North America, Europe, Africa and Asia to explain how a smart economy changes the urban spatial system and vice versa. This book focuses on exploratory city studies in different countries, which investigate how urban spatial systems adapt to the specific needs of smart urban economy. The theory of smart city economic development is not yet entirely understood and applied in metropolitan regional plans. Smart urban economies are largely the result of the influence of ICT applications on all aspects of urban economy, which in turn changes the land-use system. It points out that the dynamics of smart city GDP creation takes 'different paths,' which need further empirical study, hypothesis testing and mathematical modelling. Although there are hypotheses on how smart cities generate wealth and social benefits for nations, there are no significant empirical studies available on how they generate urban economic development through urban spatial adaptation. This book with 13 cities research studies is one attempt to fill in the gap in knowledge base.

This book introduces the latest thinking on the use of Big Data in the context of urban systems, including research and insights on human behavior, urban dynamics, resource use, sustainability and spatial disparities, where it promises improved planning, management and governance in the urban sectors (e.g., transportation, energy, smart cities, crime, housing, urban and regional economies, public health, public engagement, urban governance and political systems), as well as Big Data's utility in decision-making, and development of indicators to monitor economic and social activity, and for urban sustainability, transparency, livability, social inclusion, place-making, accessibility and resilience.

From the heights of the Fells and Snowdonia to the flat fenlands of East Anglia, from the bleakness of Dartmoor to the abundance of the Weald -- England and Wales show a variety of landscape unparalleled in the world. In this book Andrew Goudie describes how and why such a complexity of landforms evolved, covering the regiona s history from the earliest times to the present. Fully illustrated with line drawings, maps an dphotographs, and written by one of the foremost scholars of his generation, this is a book that will both inform and entertain.

This book describes the importance of integration and clustering in creating sustainable economic growth. Modern economic conditions demonstrate the need for governmental stimulation of cluster initiatives in entrepreneurship, and make it necessary to study the experience of developed countries in the sphere of stimulation of cluster initiatives in entrepreneurship, and to offer recommendations for improving the system of state stimulation of these initiatives. The authors conclude that at present, innovational economy is an economic system that functions on the basis of business networks, as this model offers innovational cooperation between specialists from various scientific and technical spheres, between organizations of various sizes (large, medium, and small), and between groups of various types of companies. Cluster strategy in modern global practice is one of the most important tools of public policy for increasing the competitiveness of national economies. This means that the most competitive spheres develop on the basis of the cluster principle, and support for cluster building increases a country's economic competitiveness.

This book highlights the aeolian processes in the desert zone of Kazakhstan and Central Asian Deserts, and analyzes the current status of dust and sand storms in Central Asia and Kazakhstan. It also highlights the analyses, dynamics and long-term observations of storms on the basis of numerous cartographic materials and satellite images. Dust/sand storms are a common and important phenomenon in the arid and semi-arid regions of Kazakhstan and Central Asia as well,especially in its southern parts, where areas are covered by a great variety of deserts and offer a significant source of mineral and salt aerosols. The deserts of Kazakhstan mostly cover lowlands and extend from the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to the piedmonts of the Tien-Shan Mountain. In Kazakhstan and Central Asia desertification processes due to wind erosion in the form of dust/sand storms were observed in semi-desert and desert landscapes.

The book is written in the backdrop of the environmental impacts of and future requirements from the natural environment for rapid economic growth that has characterized recent economic history of China and India, especially over the past few decades. The environmental impacts of such rapid economic changes have been, more frequently than otherwise, degrading in character. Environmental impacts of economic activities create degraded natural ecosystems by over utilization of nature's provisioning ecosystem services (from Himalaya to the Ocean), as well, by the use of the natural environment as sink for dumping of unmarketable products or unused inputs of economic activities. Such processes affect wide range of ecosystem processes on which the natural environment including human population depend on. Critical perspectives cast by various chapters in this book draw attention to the various ways in which space and power interact to produce diverse geographies of sustainability in a globalizing world. They also address the questions such as who decides what kind of a spatial arrangement of political power is needed for sustaining the environment. Who stands to gain (or lose) what, when, where, and why from certain geographical areas being demarcated as ecologically unique, fragile and vulnerable environments? Whose needs and values are being catered to by a given ecosystem service? What is the scope for critical inquiry into the ways in which the environment is imagined, represented and resisted in both geopolitical struggles and everyday life? The book provides insights to both academics from diverse disciplines and policy makers, civil society actors interested in mutual exchange of knowledge between China and India.