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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Conservation of the environment > General
In 1994, representatives from all over the world met in Costa Rica to discuss the impact of ecological economics on developing countries. That groundbreaking conference laid the foundation for this new collection of research on environmental sustainability. While most discussions on sustainable development focus on the industrialized nations, Environmental Sustainability: Practical Global Applications takes a different angle: it presents the views of the developing countries themselves on issues such as wildlife resources in Nambia, timber production in Costa Rica, property rights and land reform in South Africa, and other steps being taken to implement environmentally sustainable economies around the world. This is an ideal text for students of natural and social sciences, development professionals and entrepreneurs seeking opportunities for ecologically sustainable businesses. Academics will find it useful as a source of current research and for making new contacts in the field. For anyone interested in exploring the link between man and his environment-specifically, the relationship between economics and ecology- Environmental Sustainability, is a must.
Our current moment is filled with despair about climate crises and the possibility of coming to any kind of agreement that might change the dire outcomes. Shoulder to Shoulder tells the stories of communities in North Western America who learned to talk to each other and to solve the conflicts between stakeholders. Loggers, cattle ranchers, rogue-river keepers, corporate developers, tree huggers, and indigenous peoples from many tribes are just a few of the characters in these stories of hope for our climate. This is a book for anyone wanting to make a difference, anyone looking for camaraderie with others of like mind, anyone believing that democracy requires engaged citizenship, anyone looking for hope. The message throughout is that change can be made with large numbers of caring, involved, thinking, co-operative people, change to protect both democracy and a livable planet.
This book provides the first contemporary assessment of area-based conservation and its implications for nature and society. Now covering 15 per cent of the land surface and a growing area of ocean, the creation of protected areas is one of the fastest conscious changes in land management in history. But this has come at a cost, including a backlash from human rights organisations about the social impacts of protected areas. At the same time, a range of new types of area-based conservation has emerged, based on indigenous people's territories, local community lands and a new designation of "other effective area-based conservation measures". This book provides a concise overview of the status and possible futures of area-based conservation. With many people calling for half the earth's land surface to remain in a natural condition, this book taps into the urgent debate about the feasibility of such an aim and the ways in which such land might be managed. It provides a timely contribution by people who have been at the centre of the debate for the last twenty years. Building on the authors' large personal knowledge, the book draws on global case studies where the authors have firsthand experience, including Yosemite National Park (USA), Blue Mountains National Park (Australia), Bwindi National Park (Uganda), Chingaza National Park (Colombia), Ustyart Plateau (Kazakhstan), Snowdonia National Park (Wales) and many more. This book is essential reading for students, academics and practitioners interested in conservation and its impact on society.
A practical and inspiring approach to tackling our environmental crisis, from a master spiritual teacher. We can heal our earth by choosing a simpler, more fulfilling lifestyle, as trustees of a compassionate universe. Eknath Easwaran presents a penetrating analysis of the spiritual roots of our current predicament and offers a realistic and hopeful way forward. Each of us has a role to play in making wise choices, and each of us can genuinely make a difference. Drawing inspiration and insight from Mahatma Gandhi, Saint Francis, and his own experience of living in the East and the West, Easwaran shows the connections between individual thoughts and actions that move beyond consumerism to the unity of life. Mahatma Gandhi formulated a series of diagnoses of our seemingly perpetual state of crisis, which he called "the seven social sins": knowledge without character, science without humanity, wealth without work, commerce without morality, politics without principles, pleasure without conscience, and worship without self-sacrifice. Easwaran explores each of these diagnoses in turn and presents an alternative hypothesis of who we are and how we fit into the universe. This is ecology as a great adventure, filled with the challenges and rewards of inner growth. Easwaran tells us that "once we open our eyes to cooperation, artistry, thrift, and compassion, we begin to see thousands of little things we can do to help restore the environment - and restore dignity and deeper fulfillment to our own lives." Eknath Easwaran is renowned as a teacher of meditation and for his translations of the Indian scriptures. His writings express timeless spiritual insights and are illustrated by stories from East and West. His books reflect two cultures: India, where he grew up in a self-supporting agrarian village, and the United States, where he taught and lectured for over thirty years. His early experiences of living in harmony with nature, his firsthand acquaintance with Gandhi's India, and his long familiarity with an American audience have resulted in this book: a deeply thoughtful examination of our present situation, and a blueprint for living as trustees of a compassionate universe, in a world that we would want our children and grandchildren to inherit.
National Parks are Britain's breathing spaces - protected areas enjoyed by the millions of visitors attracted every year by their tranquillity, beauty and landscape. Fifteen National Parks cover a significant share of Britain's total land area - 10 per cent of England, 20 per cent of Wales, and 7 per cent of Scotland. Yet despite their importance, few people today are aware of the campaign in the 1930s and 1940s to establish National Parks. And fewer still know the name of the man who was its principal driving force. John Dower was an architect, a planner, a prodigious walker, an accomplished writer and, above all, a fighter. Fight for It Now is the first biography to be written about him, and the title reflects his one great objective and the increasing urgency of attaining it as his health declined. Drawing on extensive national archives and his private papers and letters, the book describes Dower's early work with pressure groups like the Friends of the Lake District and the Council for the Protection of Rural England, and then his subsequent move during the Second World War to an influential position inside government, focusing on post-war reconstruction. While German bombs were falling on British cities, it was part of Dower's job to quarter the English countryside and identify potential areas for National Parks. Dower's most influential contribution was his 'one-man White Paper' National Parks in England and Wales published at the end of the war in 1945. The 'Dower Report' addressed key questions on the criteria for selecting National Parks, where they should be located, who they were for, and how they should be administered, and it paved the way at last for the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. While overcoming opponents both outside and inside government, Dower wrote continuously as though his project could only be hammered out at white heat. And all the while, the one struggle he knew he could not win was the tuberculosis that eventually killed him, at the tragically early age of forty-seven.
Agroecology not only encompasses aspects of ecology, but the ecology of sustainable food production systems, and related societal and cultural values. To provide effective communication regarding status and advances in this field, connections must be established with many disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, environmental sciences, ethics, agriculture, economics, ecology, rural development, sustainability, policy and education, or integrations of these general themes so as to provide integrated points of view that will help lead to a sustainable construction of values. Such designs are inherently complex and dynamic, and go beyond the individual farm to include landscapes, communities, and biogeographic regions by emphasizing their unique agricultural and ecological values, and their biological, societal, and cultural components and processes.
The recent technologies for sustainable development and maintaining ecological integrity in the field of agriculture, forestry and environmental management for the green future. Describes the recent technologies and issues to generate awareness among the global scientific community towards sustainable development. Covers various eco-friendly approaches for successful management of soil, water, forest, agriculture, and other natural resources. Addresses the policy issues promoting conservation, protection and management of various natural resources. Presents the issues of climate change and sustainable strategies to combat such a mega event. The existence of life on the earth primarily depends upon the agriculture, forest and environment. The changing climate is imposing the multifaceted challenges in front of human civilization. The agroecosystem management practices and technologies leads to higher productivity with destruction of agricultural, forest and environmental habitat leading to soil-water-air pollution. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) plays a key role in the promoting research and developmental activities in various sectors to achieve the sustainable development goals under 2030 agenda. Gradual growth of science and technology has imposed a significant pressure on the different ecosystem. In this context, approaches such as sustainable agriculture, forestry and eco-friendly technologies need to be address across the world. Keeping view of these facts this book underlines scientific chapters dealing with the issues with proper explanation, and accompanied by illustrative diagrams, tables, database as required. The editors have tried to provide a brief scenario about the current issues related to the agriculture, forestry and environment. Therefore, the book would be a very useful resource for academicians, scientists, and policy makers of the related field.
What is it like to lose your front porch to the ocean? To watch saltwater destroy your favorite fishing holes? To see playgrounds and churches subside and succumb to brackish and rising water? The residents of coastal Louisiana know. For them hurricanes are but exclamation points in an incessant loss of coastal land now estimated to occur at a rate of at least twenty-four square miles per year. In "Losing Ground," coastal Louisianans communicate the significance of place and environment. During interviews taken just before the 2005 hurricanes, they send out a plea to alleviate the damage. They speak with an urgency that exemplifies a fear of losing not just property and familiar surroundings, but their identity as well. People along Louisiana's southeastern coast hold a deep attachment to place, and this shows in the urgency of the narratives David M. Burley collects here. The meanings that residents attribute to coastal land loss reflect a tenuous and uprooted sense of self. The process of coastal land loss and all of its social components, from the familial to the political, impacts these residents' concepts of history and the future. Burley updates many of his subjects' narratives to reveal what has happened in the wake of the back-to-back disasters of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
"This fascinating and most timely critical medical anthropology study successfully binds two still emergent areas of contemporary anthropological research in the global world: the nature and significant impact of multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers on human social life everywhere, and the contribution of corporations to the fast-paced degradation of our life support system, planet Earth. . . . Focusing on a pharmaceutically-impacted town on the colonized island of Puerto Rico, Dietrich ably demonstrates the value of ethnography carried out in small places in framing the large issues facing humanity." -Merrill Singer, University of Connecticut The production of pharmaceuticals is among the most profitable industries on the planet. Drug companies produce chemical substances that can save, extend, or substantially improve the quality of human life.However, even as the companies present themselves publicly as health and environmental stewards, their factories are a significant source of air and water pollution--toxic to people and the environment. In Puerto Rico, the pharmaceutical industry is the backbone of the island's economy: in one small town alone, there are over a dozen drug factories representing five multinationals, the highest concentration per capita of such factories in the world. It is a place where the enforcement of environmental regulations and the public trust they ensure are often violated in the name of economic development. The Drug Company Next Door unites the concerns of critical medical anthropology with those of political ecology, investigating the multi-faceted role of pharmaceutical corporations as polluters, economic providers, and social actors. Rather than simply demonizing the drug companies, the volume explores the dynamics involved in their interactions with the local community and discusses the strategies used by both individuals and community groups to deal with the consequences of pollution. The Drug Company Next Door puts a human face on a growing set of problems for communities around the world. Accessible and engaging, the book encourages readers to think critically about the role of corporations in everyday life, health, and culture.
The original edition of this seminal book, published in 1991, introduced the concept of using markets and property rights to protect and improve environmental quality. Since publication, the ideas in this book have been adopted not only by conservative circles but by a wide range of environmental groups. To mention a few examples, Defenders of Wildlife applies the tenets of free market environmentalism to its wolf compensation program; World Wildlife Federation has successfully launched the CAMPFIRE program in southern Africa to reward native villagers who conserve elephants; and the Oregon Water Trust uses water markets to purchase or lease water for salmon and steelhead habitats. This revised edition updates the successful applications of free market environmentalism and adds two new chapters.
Land degradation is increasingly considered as a global problem. The extent of degraded and degrading areas adversely impacts on large numbers of people and leads to significant social and economic costs, thus raising the questions: In which way is it worth taking action against land degradation? Where and when should action take place, and what are costs related to certain actions? For policy makers it is important to know the social and economic costs linked to the current and future status of land degradation. A conceptual framework that allows comparing the costs of action against land degradation versus the costs of inaction is provided in this book. The applicability of the framework is illustrated with case studies and prepares the ground for a global assessment on the costs of land degradation.
Winner of the 2015 Rachel Carson Prize presented by the Society for Social Studies of Science Residents of a small Louisiana town were sure that the oil refinery next door was making them sick. As part of a campaign demanding relocation away from the refinery, they collected scientific data to prove it. Their campaign ended with a settlement agreement that addressed many of their grievances-but not concerns about their health. Yet, instead of continuing to collect data, residents began to let refinery scientists' assertions that their operations did not harm them stand without challenge. What makes a community move so suddenly from actively challenging to apparently accepting experts' authority? Refining Expertise argues that the answer lies in the way that refinery scientists and engineers defined themselves as experts. Rather than claiming to be infallible, they began to portray themselves as responsible-committed to operating safely and to contributing to the well-being of the community. The volume shows that by grounding their claims to responsibility in influential ideas from the larger culture about what makes good citizens, nice communities, and moral companies, refinery scientists made it much harder for residents to challenge their expertise and thus re-established their authority over scientific questions related to the refinery's health and environmental effects. Gwen Ottinger here shows how industrial facilities' current approaches to dealing with concerned communities-approaches which leave much room for negotiation while shielding industry's environmental and health claims from critique-effectively undermine not only individual grassroots campaigns but also environmental justice activism and far-reaching efforts to democratize science. This work drives home the need for both activists and politically engaged scholars to reconfigure their own activities in response, in order to advance community health and robust scientific knowledge about it.
Conflicting and competing claims over the actual and imagined use of land and seascapes are exacerbated on islands with high population density. The management of culture and heritage is particularly tested in island environments where space is finite and the population struggles to preserve cultural and natural assets in the face of the demands of the construction industry, immigration, high tourism and capital investment. Drawn from extreme island scenarios, the ten case studies in this volume review practices and policies for effective heritage management and offer rich descriptive and analytic material about land-use conflict. In addition, they point to interesting, new directions in which research, public policy and heritage management intersect.
With the rapid growth of the nanotechnology industry, the need to understand the biological effects of aerosol exposure has become increasingly important. Featuring contributions by leading experts in the field, Aerosols Handbook: Measurement, Dosimetry, and Health Effects, Second Edition offers an up-to-date overview of many aspects of aerosols, from properties to health effects and epidemiology. Covering indoor, outdoor, industrial, medical, pharmaceutical, and radioactive aerosols, this book explores aerosol dosimetry by defining terms such as exposure and dose. In addition, it looks at nanometer particles, the mechanism of aerosol deposition in the lungs, and modeling deposition with a corresponding uncertainty in risk assessment. The text also emphasizes the importance of accurate aerosol measurements, particularly breathing zone exposure assessments. Examining radioactive aerosols, the book discusses lessons learned from nuclear accidents, radon and thoron, and long-lived radionuclides in the environment. It brings together research on both radioactive and nonradioactive aerosols, supplying readers with a more complete view of how aerosols behave in the lungs. New in This Edition Five new chapters that address the safety of nanomaterials, dealing with nanoparticle cell penetration, high aspect ratio nanomaterials, nanoaerosols in drug delivery, risk assessment, and health effects New chapters on atmospheric pollution related to climate change, chemical analyses of particle filter deposits, and classical nucleation theory New data on measurement, dosimetry, and health effects Updated throughout, this second edition continues to be an essential resource for those who study exposure, dosages, and toxicity to develop treatments for exposure, reduce air pollution, and establish better safety regulat
First Along the River: A Brief History of the U.S. Environmental Movement provides students with a balanced, historical perspective on the history of the environmental movement in relation to major social and political events in U.S. history, from the pre-colonial era to the present. The book highlights important people and events, places critical concepts in context, and shows the impact of government, industry, and population on the American landscape. Comprehensive yet brief, First Along the River discusses the religious and philosophical beliefs that shaped Americans' relationship to the environment, traces the origins and development of government regulations that impact Americans' use of natural resources, and shows why popular environmental groups were founded and how they changed over time. The fifth edition includes up-to-date coverage of the environmental movement and developments including an overview of environmental issues since 2012, environmental policies impacted by the Trump administration, the coronavirus pandemic, and the switch back to a more global perspective under the Biden administration.
Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice provides a comprehensive overview of the achievements and challenges confronting the environmental justice movement. Pressured by increased international competition and the demand for higher profits, industrial and political leaders are working to weaken many of America's most essential environmental, occupational, and consumer protection laws. In addition, corporate-led globalization exports many ecological hazards abroad. The result is a deepening of the ecological crisis in both the United States and the Global South. However, not all people are impacted equally. In this process of capital restructuring, it is the most marginalized segments of society -poor people of color and the working class-that suffer the greatest force of corporate environmental abuses. Daniel Faber, a leading environmental sociologist, analyzes the global political and economic forces that create these environmental injustices. With a multi-disciplinary approach, Faber presents both broad overviews and powerful insider case studies, examining the connections between many different struggles for change. Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice explores compelling movements to challenge the polluter-industrial complex and bring about meaningful social transformation.
Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice provides a comprehensive overview of the achievements and challenges confronting the environmental justice movement. Pressured by increased international competition and the demand for higher profits, industrial and political leaders are working to weaken many of America's most essential environmental, occupational, and consumer protection laws. In addition, corporate-led globalization exports many ecological hazards abroad. The result is a deepening of the ecological crisis in both the United States and the Global South. However, not all people are impacted equally. In this process of capital restructuring, it is the most marginalized segments of society -poor people of color and the working class-that suffer the greatest force of corporate environmental abuses. Daniel Faber, a leading environmental sociologist, analyzes the global political and economic forces that create these environmental injustices. With a multi-disciplinary approach, Faber presents both broad overviews and powerful insider case studies, examining the connections between many different struggles for change. Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice explores compelling movements to challenge the polluter-industrial complex and bring about meaningful social transformation.
Increasingly, environmental decision making is like playing a multidimensional game of chess. With interactions between the atmosphere, the litho-hydrosphere, and the biosphere, the game is at once a measure of complexity, uncertainty, interdisciplinary acuity, social-environmental sustainability, and social justice for all generations. As such, it demands a systemic point of view. Decision Making for a Sustainable Environment: A Systemic Approach gives readers the tools to replace the dysfunctional, symptomatic decision making that has plunged the world into environmental crises with a systemic approach that fosters social-environmental sustainability. A New Paradigm for Environmental Decision Making Based on the author's more than 45 years of research and broad, international experience, this book guides policy makers and managers to work with-rather than within-theoretical and methodological frameworks to achieve multidimensional and multilayered policy decisions. It discusses systemic thinking as a rational, viable alternative to competitive, materialistic, and symptomatic decision making. Insights, Approaches, and Examples for Leadership Organized into three parts, the book begins by describing the inviolable biophysical principles that define the limitations of human choices. The second part examines in depth why the conventional command-and-control form of decision making tends to become dysfunctional and fails. It also explains how to break the cycle of such behavior. A case study by Jessica K. La Porte explores the challenges of creating a program of environmentally sustainable decision making. The third part of the book explores what it takes to be a psychologically mature decision maker. A Peaceful Path toward Social-Environmental Sustainability for All Generations
This book explores the challenges of presenting sustainability as a more actionable or practical concept and identifying approaches that might offer useful assistance in addressing the temporal and spatial representation of sustainability. The underlying premise of this book is that sustainability is a state realized in the future. In that future there is a geographic arrangement of society and economy that agrees with its environmental setting. This future perspective introduces a little examined subject area that can lend significant content to the sustainability challenge: Futures Research.
Advances in Responsible Land Administration challenges conventional forms of land administration by introducing alternative approaches and provides the basis for a new land administration theory. A compilation of observations about responsible land administration in East Africa, it focuses on a new empirical foundation rather than preexisting ideals. Presenting practical knowledge resulting from real cases, it incorporates empirical studies highlighting Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya. The book considers contemporary change forces that include responsible technological innovation, post-conflict contexts, rural poverty, rapid urbanization, food security, and citizen participation. It covers land information system design, innovative data capture tools and techniques, and algorithms and approaches to support land consolidation and pastoralist land administration. The book also evaluates the outcomes of approaches specifically geared toward workflow design, land use changes, land tenure perceptions, conflict reduction, and governance measures. Outlining key aspects of what fit for purpose land administration looks like, this book presents: A contemporary update for the land administration sector An overview of East African developments, a current focus region for innovative land administration design A collection of cutting-edge tools from practice and for practice-with enough support data and methodological underpinnings to be readily utilized for advocacy, design, and assessment Advances in Responsible Land Administration is an up-to-date discourse that promotes the theoretical notion of responsible land administration. The book highlights real cases, provides real data, and introduces novel alternatives to conventional methodologies in land administration. Using the information in this book, you can develop a coherent th
Sustainability and the Rights of Nature: An Introduction is a much-needed guide that addresses the exciting and significant paradigm shift to the Rights of Nature, as it is occurring both in the United States and internationally in the fields of environmental law and environmental sustainability. This shift advocates building a relationship of integrity and reciprocity with the planet by placing Nature in the forefront of our rights-based legal systems. The authors discuss means of achieving this by laying out Nature's Laws of Reciprocity and providing a roadmap of the strategies and directions needed to create a Rights of Nature-oriented legal system that will shape and maintain human activities in an environmentally sustainable manner. This work is enriched with an array of unique and relevant points of reference such as the feudal notions of obligation, principles of traditional indigenous cultivation, the Pope Francis Encyclical on the environment, and the new Rights of Nature-based legal systems of Ecuador and Bolivia that can serve as prototypes for the United States and other countries around the world to help ensure a future of environmental sustainability for all living systems.
This book is a useful reference work for practicing engineers in their evaluation and design of systems for the control of the industrial in-plant environment. It provides design criteria, useful calculations and proven techniques to control the environment in oil refineries and chemical industries.
First Along the River: A Brief History of the U.S. Environmental Movement provides students with a balanced, historical perspective on the history of the environmental movement in relation to major social and political events in U.S. history, from the pre-colonial era to the present. The book highlights important people and events, places critical concepts in context, and shows the impact of government, industry, and population on the American landscape. Comprehensive yet brief, First Along the River discusses the religious and philosophical beliefs that shaped Americans' relationship to the environment, traces the origins and development of government regulations that impact Americans' use of natural resources, and shows why popular environmental groups were founded and how they changed over time. The fifth edition includes up-to-date coverage of the environmental movement and developments including an overview of environmental issues since 2012, environmental policies impacted by the Trump administration, the coronavirus pandemic, and the switch back to a more global perspective under the Biden administration.
Historic Yellowstone National Park captures the most interesting moments in the park's history, the slices of life in Montana and Wyoming that provide an idea of what life was like for those who chose to explore this gloriously beautiful corner of the United States. There's the presence of Native Americans in the early years of the area's history, the early explorers and expeditions, its debut as the very first national park, the explosive growth of tourism, and the people who made history in this astonishing and mysterious Rocky Mountain landscape. Historic YellowstoneNational Park provides just enough of this rich history to make the experience of visiting the park better than expected.
Community-based wildlife conservation is promoted as a win-win solution for wildlife and people that will protect biodiversity while improving the economic status of communities living among wildlife. This book, based on mixed-method anthropological research conducted in Samburu County, Kenya, demonstrates that, counter to simple narratives promising benefits, community-based wildlife conservancies (CBCs) are complex social institutions layered on pre-existing land use practices with differential impacts for members. Using ethnographic and mixed methods, the Carolyn K. Lesorogol explains how diverse social actors understand and operate CBCs, how benefits and costs are distributed, the gendered nature of CBCs, and how they impact cooperation and conflict in communities. Lesorogrol's analysis shows that economic benefits to members are generally very limited, and while some perceive improvements in security emanating from CBCs, there is also evidence that they heighten tensions over land use as well as human-wildlife conflict. This book offers critical insights into the implications of the CBC model for local pastoralist livelihoods, conservation, and social relations. |
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