Although our planet faces numerous ecological crises, including climate change, many Christians continue to view their faith as primarily a "spiritual" matter that has little relationship to the world in which we live. But Steven Bouma-Prediger contends that protecting and restoring our planet is part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian. Making his case from Scripture, theology, and ethics and including insights from the global church, Bouma-Prediger explains why Christians must acknowledge their identity as earthkeepers and therefore embrace their calling to serve and protect their home planet and fellow creatures. To help readers put an "earthkeeping faith" into practice, he also suggests numerous practical steps that concerned believers can take to care for the planet. Bouma-Prediger unfolds a biblical vision of earthkeeping and challenges Christians to view care for the earth as an integral part of Christian discipleship.

Ecological restoration is as essential as sustainable development for the health of the biosphere. Restoration, however, has been a low priority of most countries' environmental laws, which tend to focus narrowly on rehabilitation of small, discrete sites rather than the more ambitious recovery of entire ecosystems and landscapes. Through critical theoretical perspectives and topical case studies, this book's diverse contributors explore a more ambitious agenda for ecological restoration law. Not only do they investigate current laws and other governance mechanisms; they also consider the philosophical and methodological bases for the law to take ecological restoration more seriously. Through exploration of themes relating to time, space, geography, semiotics, social justice, and scientific knowledge, this book offers innovative and critical insights into ecological restoration law.

The call to care for creation is a central part of our discipleship as followers of Jesus Christ. However, language and imagery of the earth is often absent in our worship services. This book helps reconnect our commitment to creation care with our life of discipleship. The process includes helping congregational members name ways that they are involved in caring for creation and encourage them to see ways that these practices are related to Christian faith. Nurturing the life of our communities is a vital way to fostering our identity as those who care for the earth. At the heart of this process is the importance of discovering and developing biblical imagery and language that will support and foster our care of creation and shape our prayers. As our actions are more closely connected to the language of our prayers, praying and acting will inform each other. In addition, the book includes liturgies that highlight earth care prepared for the major festivals of the church year.

This history of one of the most contentious educational issues in America examines bilingual instruction in the United States from the common school era to the recent federal involvement in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing from school reports, student narratives, legal resources, policy documents, and other primary sources, the work teases out the underlying agendas and patterns in bilingual schooling during much of America's history. The study demonstrates clearly how the broader context - the cultural, intellectual, religious, demographic, economic, and political forces - shaped the contours of dual-language instruction in America between the 1840s and 1960s. Ramsey's work fills a crucial void in the educational literature and addresses not only historians, linguists, and bilingual scholars, but also policymakers and practitioners in the field.

Human activities are depleting ecosystems at an unprecedented rate. In spite of nature conservation efforts worldwide, many ecosystems including those critical for human well-being have been damaged or destroyed. States and citizens need a new vision of how humans can reconnect with the natural environment. With its focus on the long-term holistic recovery of ecosystems, ecological restoration has received increasing attention in the past decade from both scientists and policymakers. Research on the implications of ecological restoration for the law and law for ecological restoration has been largely overlooked. This is the first published book to examine comprehensively the relationship between international environmental law and ecological restoration. While international environmental law (IEL) has developed significantly as a discipline over the past four decades, this book enquires whether IEL can now assist states in making a strategic transition from not just protecting and maintaining the natural environment but also actively restoring it. Arguing that states have international duties to restore, this book offers reflections on the philosophical context of ecological restoration and the legal content of a duty to restore from an international law, European Union law and national law perspective. The book concludes with a discussion of several contemporary themes of interest to both lawyers and ecologists including the role of private actors, protected areas and climate change in ecological restoration.

This book is a major contribution to our understanding of environmental politics in Latin America. The chapters present a wealth of original research that shows that environmental concerns are part of the daily life of indigenous populations and other grassroots groups. The theoretical frame of environmental citizenship provides a compelling way for thinking about how their environmental demands are closely linked to their national identity, political participation, land and resources. . Kathryn Hochstetler, University of Waterloo

Scholarship related to environmental questions in Latin America has only recently begun to coalesce around citizenship as both an empirical site of inquiry and an analytical frame of reference. This has led to a series of new insights and perspectives, but few efforts have been made to bring these various approaches into a sustained conversation across different social, temporal and geographic contexts. This volume is the result of a collaborative endeavour to advance debates on environmental citizenship, while simultaneously and systematically addressing broader theoretical and methodological questions related to the particularities of studying environment and citizenship in Latin America. Providing a window onto leading scholarship in the field, the book also sets an ambitious agenda to spark further research.

Alex Latta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University and in the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

Hannah Wittman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Member of the Latin American Studies Program at Simon Fraser University."

After 1945, those responsible for conservation in Germany resumed their work with a relatively high degree of continuity as far as laws and personnel were concerned. Yet conservationists soon found they had little choice but to modernize their views and practices in the challenging postwar context. Forced to change by necessity, those involved in state-sponsored conservation institutionalized and professionalized their efforts, while several private groups became more confrontational in their message and tactics. Through their steady and often conservative presence within the mainstream of West German society, conservationists ensured that by 1970 the map of the country was dotted with hundreds of reserves, dozens of nature parks, and one national park. In doing so, they assured themselves a strong position to participate in, rather than be excluded from, the left-leaning environmental movement of the 1970s.

The first and so far only Plant Geography of Chile was written about 100 years ago, since when many things have changed: plants have been renamed and reclassified; taxonomy and systematics have experienced deep changes as have biology, geography, and biogeography. The time is therefore ripe for a new look at Chile's plants and their distribution.

Focusing on three key issues - botany/systematics, geography and biogeographical analysis - this book presents a thoroughly updated synthesis both of Chilean plant geography and of the different approaches to studying it. Because of its range - from the neotropics to the temperate sub-Antarctic - Chile's flora provides a critical insight into evolutionary patterns, particularly in relation to the distribution along the latitudinal profiles and the global geographical relationships of the country's genera. The consequences of these relations for the evolution of the Chilean Flora are discussed.

This book will provide a valuable resource for both graduate students and researchers in botany, plant taxonomy and systematics, biogeography, evolutionary biology and plant conservation.

Based on graph theory studies this book seeks to understand how tropical species interact with each other and how these interactions are affected by perturbations in some of the most species-rich habitats on earth. Due to the great diversity of species and interactions in the tropics, this book addresses a wide range of current and future issues with empirical examples and complete revisions on different types of ecological networks: from mutualisms to antagonisms. The goal of this publication is not to be only for researchers but also for undergraduates in different areas of knowledge, and also to serve as a reference text for graduate-level courses mainly in the life sciences.

The battle to save the world is being joined by a powerful new group of warriors. Celebrities are lending their name to conservation causes, and conservation itself is growing its own stars to fight and speak for nature. In this timely and essential book, Dan Brockington argues that this alliance grows from the mutually supportive publicity celebrity and conservation causes provide for each other, and more fundamentally, that the flourishing of celebrity and charismatic conservation is part of an ever-closer intertwining of conservation and corporate capitalism. Celebrity promotions, the investments of rich executives, and the wealthy social networks of charismatic conservationists are producing more commodified and commercial conservation strategies; conservation becomes an ever more important means of generating profit. Celebrity and the Environment provides vital critical analysis of this new phenomena and argues that, ironically, there may be a hidden cost to celebrity power to individual's relationships with the wild. The author argues that whilst wildlife television documentaries flourish, there is a significant decline in visits to national parks in many countries around the world and this is evidence that t a time when conservationists are calling for us to restore our relationships with the wild, many people are doing so simply by following the exploits of celebrity conservationists.

Uganda has extensive protected areas and iconic wildlife (including mountain gorillas), which exist within a complex social and political environment. In recent years Uganda has been seen as a test bed and model case study for numerous and varied approaches to address complex and connected conservation and development challenges. This volume reviews and assesses these initiatives, collecting new research and analyses both from emerging scholars and well-established academics in Uganda and around the globe. Approaches covered range from community-based conservation to the more recent proliferation of neoliberalised interventions based on markets and payments for ecosystem services. Drawing on insights from political ecology, human geography, institutional economics, and environmental science, the authors explore the challenges of operationalising truly sustainable forms of development in a country whose recent history is characterised by a highly volatile governance and development context. They highlight the stakes for vulnerable human populations in relation to of large and growing socioeconomic inequalities, as well as for Uganda's rich, unique, and globally significant biodiversity. They illustrate the conflicts that occur between competing claims of conservation, agriculture, tourism, and the energy and mining industries. Crucially, the book draws out lessons that can be learned from the Ugandan experience for conservation and development practitioners and scholars around the world.

Since the mid-1990s, growing concerns about environmental degradation, declining agricultural productivity, and increasing population pressures have led governments and agencies to seek new approaches to natural resource management.;This text addresses this problem by presenting the findings of a formal study and in-depth research project into the impacts of participatory watershed management in a wide range of agroecological and socioeconomic settings in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America.;The 23 case studies included here present a complex picture of the problems, achievements and continuing challenges faced by conservation professionals and farmers around the world. They provide compelling evidence of the importance of local people's involvement in natural resource planning and management. At the same time, they reveal how difficult it is to scale-up and institutionalize participatory approaches in large, sector-based programmes, particularly in government bureaucracies.;This collection offers no shortcuts to better land husbandry or enhanced rural livelihoods, but it does provide an analysis of the biophysical, socioeconomic and institutional impacts of development and management practices, and to point to practicable and realistic ways forward for both governments and external support agencies.

Carry John Muir's wisdom with you in this inspirational guide that features 60 of his most insightful quotes. As a patriarch of the American environmental movement, John Muir helped to give birth to the national park system, the Sierra Club, and a myriad of smaller groups devoted to saving rivers, redwoods, and wildlife. Yet, he is also a spiritual parent who leads us down unmarked trails of the spirit. By urging us to simply be present in the world around us, loving and honoring it as our garden home, his poetic insight liberates life. In Meditations of John Muir, editor Chris Highland pairs 60 Muir quotes with selections from other celebrated thinkers and spiritual texts. Take this pocket-size guide with you on backpacks, nature hikes, and camping trips. Let Muir's words enrich your experience as you ponder the wilderness from riverbank, mountaintop, or as you relax beside your campfire. Inside you'll find: 60 inspiring John Muir quotes Selections of text from other philosophical minds Short excerpts for convenient reading Muir's exuberance for nature was the touchstone for his commitment to the earth and all of its creatures. Let him lead you along the ultimate adventure that treks every range of light. Then venture off on your own deertrails of the heart, harkening to his granite gospel that calls for you "to get as near to the heart of the world" as you can.

The Great Depression coincided with a wave of natural disasters, including the Dust Bowl and devastating floods of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Recovering from these calamities--and preventing their reoccurrence--was a major goal of the New Deal.
In Nature's New Deal, Neil M. Maher examines the history of one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's boldest and most successful experiments, the Civilian Conservation Corps, describing it as a turning point both in national politics and in the emergence of modern environmentalism. Indeed, Roosevelt addressed both the economic and environmental crises by putting Americans to work at conserving natural resources, through the Soil Conservation Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (or CCC). The CCC created public landscapes--natural terrain altered by federal work projects--that helped environmentalism blossom after World War II, Maher notes. Millions of Americans devoted themselves to a new vision of conservation, one that went beyond the old model of simply maximizing the efficient use of natural resources, to include the promotion of human health through outdoor recreation, wilderness preservation, and ecological balance. And yet, as Maher explores the rise and development of the CCC, he also shows how the critique of its campgrounds, picnic areas, hiking trails, and motor roads frames the debate over environmentalism to this day.
From the colorful life at CCC camps, to political discussions in the White House and the philosophical debates dating back to John Muir and Frederick Law Olmsted, Nature's New Deal captures a key moment in the emergence of modern environmentalism.

This study discusses an original proposal aimed at critically analyzing the power relations that exist in contemporary agriculture. The author endeavors herein to clarify some of the strategies that industrial agribusiness, in collusion with the state and multilateral structures, sets in motion in order to functionalize the lives of millions of farmers, so that their bodies, enunciations, and sensibilities can be repurposed in accordance with the dynamics of capital accumulation. The argument is based on the idea that agro-extractivism cannot be thought of exclusively as an economic-political and technological system, but as a complex interweaving of cultural meanings, aesthetics, and affections, which, amalgamated under the abstract name of "development", act as a support for the whole system's scaffolding. The book also explores the other side of the coin, describing how, and under what conditions, social movements are responding to the calamities generated by this model. The central thesis is that many ongoing agroecological processes are providing one of the most interesting guidelines at present for visualizing transitions towards post-development, post-extractivism, and the construction of multiple worlds beyond the sphere of capital. Political ecology of agriculture joins the calls that question the cultural project of modernity and the predatory sense imposed by the globalized food empire, and invites recognition of the importance of agroecology in the context of the end of the fossil-fuel era and the likely collapse of our industry-based civilization.

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.

Cultural and spiritual bonds with 'nature' are among the strongest motivators for nature conservation; yet they are seldom taken into account in the governance and management of protected and conserved areas. The starting point of this book is that to be sustainable, effective, and equitable, approaches to the management and governance of these areas need to engage with people's deeply held cultural, spiritual, personal, and community values, alongside inspiring action to conserve biological, geological, and cultural diversity. Since protected area management and governance have traditionally been based on scientific research, a combination of science and spirituality can engage and empower a variety of stakeholders from different cultural and religious backgrounds. As evidenced in this volume, stakeholders range from indigenous peoples and local communities to those following mainstream religions and those representing the wider public. The authors argue that the scope of protected area management and governance needs to be extended to acknowledge the rights, responsibilities, obligations, and aspirations of stakeholder groups and to recognise the cultural and spiritual significance that 'nature' holds for people. The book also has direct practical applications. These follow the IUCN Best Practice Guidelines for protected and conserved area managers and present a wide range of case studies from around the world, including Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas.

Read a free excerpt here! American engineers have done astounding things to bend the Mississippi River to their will: forcing one of its tributaries to flow uphill, transforming over a thousand miles of roiling currents into a placid staircase of water, and wresting the lower half of the river apart from its floodplain. American law has aided and abetted these feats. But despite our best efforts, so-called "natural disasters" continue to strike the Mississippi basin, as raging floodwaters decimate waterfront communities and abandoned towns literally crumble into the Gulf of Mexico. In some places, only the tombstones remain, leaning at odd angles as the underlying soil erodes away. Mississippi River Tragedies reveals that it is seductively deceptive-but horribly misleading-to call such catastrophes "natural." Authors Christine A. Klein and Sandra B. Zellmer present a sympathetic account of the human dreams, pride, and foibles that got us to this point, weaving together engaging historical narratives and accessible law stories drawn from actual courtroom dramas. The authors deftly uncover the larger story of how the law reflects and even amplifies our ambivalent attitude toward nature-simultaneously revering wild rivers and places for what they are, while working feverishly to change them into something else. Despite their sobering revelations, the authors' final message is one of hope. Although the acknowledgement of human responsibility for unnatural disasters can lead to blame, guilt, and liability, it can also prod us to confront the consequences of our actions, leading to a liberating sense of possibility and to the knowledge necessary to avoid future disasters.

As the impacts of anthropogenic activities increase in both magnitude and extent, biodiversity is coming under increasing pressure. Scientists and policy makers are frequently hampered by a lack of information on biological systems, particularly information relating to long-term trends. Such information is crucial to developing an understanding as to how biodiversity may respond to global environmental change. Knowledge gaps make it very difficult to develop effective policies and legislation to reduce and reverse biodiversity loss. This book explores the gap between global commitments to biodiversity conservation, and local action to track biodiversity change and implement conservation action. High profile international political commitments to improve biodiversity conservation, such as the targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity, require innovative and rapid responses from both science and policy. This multi-disciplinary perspective highlights barriers to conservation and offers novel solutions to evaluating trends in biodiversity at multiple scales.

Enrolling over 30 million acres, the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the largest conservation program in the United States. Under the guidelines of the CRP, the federal government pays farmers to stop farming their land in the hopes of achieving a variety of conservation goals, including the reduction of soil erosion, improvement of water quality, and creation of wildlife habitat. In Conserving Data, James T. Hamilton explores the role of information in the policy cycle as it relates to the CRP. The author asks how the creation and distribution of information about what is going on across these millions of enrolled acres has influenced the development of the program itself. Of the many CRP stakeholders, each accesses a different set of information about the CRP s operations. Regulators have developed the Environmental Benefits Index as a rough indicator of a field s conservation benefits and adopted that measure as a way to determine which lands should be granted conservation contracts. NGOs have used publicly available data from these contracts to show how CRP monies are allocated. Members of Congress have used oversight hearings and GAO reports to monitor the Farm Service Agency s conservation policy decisions. Reporters have localized the impact of the CRP by writing stories about increases in wildlife and hunting on CRP fields in their areas. Conserving Data brings together and analyzes these various streams of information, drawing upon original interviews with regulators, new data from Freedom of Information Act requests, and regulatory filings. Using the CRP as a launch point, Hamilton explores the role of information, including 'hidden information, ' in the design and implementation of regulatory policy

The aim of these volumes is not to cover all phases of ion-exchange theory, which may be found in general texts, nor to cover every application in the literature, or to show an engineer ways on how to become an expert in the field so he coulddo it all by himself. The main purpose of these books is to show the practical engineer what has been done in various types of applications of ion-exchange processes in pollution control, how to set up laboratory tests, the problems that may be encountered to identify the individuals and organizations who are experts in the various phases of ion exchange, and most importantly, to emphasize the new developments in the polymers with active sites that offer new approaches to wastewater treatment methods.

Tropical rain forests are increasingly expected to serve for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation amid global climate change and increasing human demands for land. Natural production forests that are legally designated to produce timber occur widely in the Southeast Asian tropics. Synergizing timber production, climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation in such tropical production forests is one of the most realistic means to resolve these contemporary global problems. Next-generation sustainable forest management is being practiced in the natural tropical rain forest of a model site in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, while earlier sustainable management practices have generally failed, leading to extensive deforestation and forest degradation elsewhere in the tropics. Ecologists have examined co-benefits of sustainable forestry in the model forest in terms of forest regeneration, carbon sequestration and biodiversity in comparison to a forest managed by destructive conventional methods. Taxonomic groups studied have included trees, decomposers, soil microbes, insects and mammals. A wide array of field methods and technology has been used including count plots, sensor cameras, and satellite remote-sensing. This book is a compilation of the results of those thorough ecological investigations and elucidates ecological processes of tropical rain forests after logging. The book furnishes useful information for foresters and conservation NGOs, and it also provides baseline information for biologists and ecologists. A further aim is to examine the environmental effects of a forest certification scheme as the model forest has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Taken as a whole, this book proves that the desired synergy is possible.

One of the major problems encountered in the inclusion of renewable energy in university programmes is the lack of suitable materials and documents which may guide this process. The materials produced as part of the project «Renewable Energy Networks between Turkish and European Universities (RENET) - and this Handbook in particular - will therefore be especially useful to university teachers, since it shows some of the ways via which the subject issue of renewable energy may be included in university programmes. The best-practices here documented also serve the purpose of illustrating how the available know-how can be documented and transferred between countries. By means of this interdisciplinary and inclusive approach, this book will be helpful to universities in Turkey and across Europe, which may want to take full advantage of the potential benefits the inclusion of matters related to renewable energy in university programmes may bring about.

The national parks of North America are great public treasures, visited by 300 million people each year. Set aside to be kept in relatively natural condition, these remarkable places of forests, rivers, mountains, and wildlife still inspire our "capacity for wonder". Today, however, the parks are threatened by increasingly difficult problems from both inside and outside their borders. This book, enriched with personal anecdotes of the author's trips throughout the parks of North America, examines changes in the park services of the United States and Canada over the past fifteen years. William Lowry describes the many challenges facing the parks - such as rising crime, tourism and overcrowding, pollution, eroding funding for environmental research, and the contentious debate over preservation versus use - and the abilities of the agencies to deal with them. The Capacity for Wonder provides a revealing comparison of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) and the Canadian Parks Service (CPS). The author explains that, while the services are similar in many ways, the priorities of these two agencies have changed dramatically in recent years. Lowry shows how increasing conflicts over agency goals and decreasing institutional support have made the NPS vulnerable to interagency disputes, reluctant to take any risks in its operations, and extremely responsive to political pressures. As a result, U.S. national parks are now managed mainly to serve political purposes. Lowry illustrates how in the 1980s politicians pushed the NPS to expand private uses of national parks through development, timber harvesting, grazing, and mining, while environmental groups pushed the NPS in the other direction. Overthe same period, the CPS enjoyed a clarification of goals and increased institutional support. As a result, the CPS has been able to decentralize its structure, empower its employees, and renew its commitment to preservation as the highest priority. Lowry considers several proposals to change the institutions governing the parks. His own recommendations are more in line with proposals to revitalize public agencies than with those that suggest replacing them with private enterprise, state agencies, or endowment boards. Lowry concludes that preserving nature should be the primary, explicit goal of the park services, and he calls for a stronger commitment to that goal in the United States.

A wild and gripping novel about one woman's quest to reintroduce wolves to the Scottish Highlands at any cost. Inti Flynn arrives in the Scottish Highlands with fourteen grey wolves, a traumatised sister and fierce tenacity. As a biologist, she knows the animals are the best hope for rewilding the ruined landscape and she cares little for local opposition. As a sister, she hopes the remote project will offer her twin, Aggie, a chance to heal after the horrific events that drove them both out of Alaska. But violence dogs their footsteps and one night Inti stumbles over the body of a farmer. Unable to accept that her wolves could be responsible, she makes a reckless decision to protect them. But if the wolves didn't make the kill, then who did? And can she trust the man she is beginning to love when he becomes the main suspect? Propulsive and unforgettable, Once There Were Wolves is the spellbinding story of a woman desperate to save her family, the wild animals, and the natural world she loves, at any cost. 'Blazing...Visceral...As McConaghy shows in this stunning book, the limits of language lead us to the limits of empathy.' Los Angeles Times 'Bold...A heartfelt and earnest novel' New York Times Book Review