Forests need apes as much as the apes need the forests. They are the gardeners of the forest - keystone species in the ecology of African and Southeast Asian forests, dispersing seeds, creating light gaps and pruning branch-tips whilst feeding. Their habitat comprises two of the planet's three major tropical forest blocks that are essential for global climate regulation. But the economic pressures that are destroying ape habitats are much greater than current available conservation finance. This unique case study from the Kibale national park illustrates how biological research has had diverse consequences for conservation. It examines effects on habitat management, community relations, ecotourism and training. Lessons learned from this project over the last 20 years will inspire researchers and conservationists to work together to promote biodiversity through field projects.

Cities, rather than nations, have become the key sites for enacting environmental policies. This is due to the combination of growing urban populations and increased action on the part of local governments (generally attributed to national governments' failure to act on climate change). Imagining Sustainability seeks to understand how actors in local government conceptualize sustainability and their role in producing it, and what difference that understanding makes to their physical, political, and social environments now and in the future. International comparisons can uncover new ideas and possibilities. Chicago and Melbourne are prime candidates for such a comparison: they are cities of the same age, they have similar historical trajectories as interior gateways followed by industrial growth and then deindustrialization, and they have demonstrated the same recent desire to be global champions of sustainability. Based on qualitative fieldwork in these two cities, this book uses Karen Barad's methodology of diffraction to read these case studies through each other. This methodology helps to understand not only what differences exist between these two places, but what effects those differences have on the urban environment. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of urban studies, urban planning and environmental policy and governance.

Before reality TV, GPS devices, and dashboard computers, there was a coming of age for the Maine Warden Service. It was a time when a compass, map, and one's wits were what mattered most in the field. Every day offered the potential for an exciting new adventure, many of which endangered the wardens' lives. Recreating the full warden experience, Open Season includes 20 stories from two former colonels, two lieutenants, two sergeants, four district wardens, a warden pilot, and one currently active-duty corporal. Altogether, their cumulative experiences account for more than 300 years of north woods law. In addition to hair-raising, life-and-death scenarios, the collection covers moments such as a child innocently outing his parents as "looking for deer" at night, the doldrums of a stakeout, and the grief of tragedy. You'll live through the eyes of these twelve wardens and feel the excitement of a twig snapped in the dark...the frustration of second guessing yourself when lives are at stake...and the duty to do what's right, even when it means breaking the law.

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.

Why does land management so often fail to prevent soil erosion, deforestation, salination and flooding? How serious are these problems, and for whom? This book, first published in 1987, sets out to answer these questions, which are still some of the most crucial issues in development today, using an approach called 'regional political ecology'. This approach acknowledges that the reason why land management can fail are extremely varied, and must include a thorough understanding of the changing natural resource base itself, the human response to this, and broader changes in society, of which land managers are a part. Land Degradation and Society is essential reading for all students of geography, agriculture, social sciences, development studies and related subjects.

Feeding the world's growing human population is increasingly challenging, especially as more people adopt a western diet and lifestyle. Doing so without causing damage to nature poses an even greater challenge. This book argues that in order to create a sustainable food supply whilst conserving nature, agriculture and nature must be reconnected and approached together. The authors demonstrate that while the links between nature and food production have, to some extent, already been recognized, until now the focus has been to protect one from the impacts of the other. Instead, it is argued that nature and agriculture can, and should, work together and ultimately benefit from one another. Chapters describe efforts to protect nature through globally connected protected area systems and illustrate how farming methods are being shaped to protect nature within agricultural systems. The authors also point to many ways in which nature benefits agriculture through the ecosystem services it provides. Overall, the book shows that nature conservation and food production must be considered as equally important components of future solutions to meet the global demand for food in a manner that is sustainable for both the human population and the planet as a whole.

Bioregionalism is an exciting new vision for (re)making a more satisfying, ecological, sustainable society rooted in community and a celebratory culture of place. By providing tools to understand the land we live on and the sources of its natural regeneration, the more than 40 contributors to Home open up new possibilities for the creation of cultures in keeping with the requirements of the natural world. Home contains essays, poems, songs, and beautiful illustrations.

There are more crows now than ever. Their abundance is both a sign of ecological imbalance and a generous opportunity to connect with the animal world. CROW PLANET is a call to experience the wildlife in our midst, reminding us that we don't have to head to faraway places to encounter "nature." Even in the cities and suburbs where we live we are surrounded by wildlife such as crows. Through observing them we enhance our appreciation of the world's natural order, and find our own place in it. Haupt, a trained naturalist, uses science, scholarly research, myth, and personal observation to draw readers into the "crow stories" that unfold around us every day, culminating in book that transforms the way we experience our neighborhoods and our world.

Economic valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services is possibly the most powerful tool for halting the loss of biodiversity while maintaining incomes and livelihoods. Yet rarely have such approaches been applied to tropical forest 'hotspots', which house the vast majority of the planets plant and animal species. This ground-breaking work is the most comprehensive and detailed examination of the economics of environmental valuation and biodiversity conservation to date. Focusing on the Western Ghats of India, one of the top biodiversity hotspots in the world, this volume looks at a cross-section of local communities living within or near sanctuaries and reserve forests such as coffee growers, indigenous people and farmers-cum-pastoralists to assess the use and non-use values that people derive from tropical forests. It also looks at the extent of their dependence on forests for various goods and services, and examines their perceptions and attitudes towards biodiversity conservation and wildlife protection. The book concludes with an assessment of the institutional alternatives and policies for promoting biodiversity conservation through economic valuation methods.

Shades of Green examines the impact of political, economic, religious, and scientific institutions on environmental activism around the world. The book highlights the diversity of national, regional and international environmental activism, showing that the term "environmentalism" covers an entire range of perceptions, values and interests. It demonstrates that each instance of environmental activism is shaped by historically unique circumstances, highlighting within each chapter the ideological, social, and political origins of efforts to protect the environment. Discussing issues unique to different parts of the world, Shades of Green shows that environmentalism around the globe has been strengthened, weakened, or suppressed by a variety of local, national, and international concerns, politics, and social realities.

This book contributes to the theoretical and practitioner literature in environmental governance and sustainability of natural resources by linking case studies of the roles of narratives to the three key practices in local environmental governance: socio-political legitimacy in participation; collaboratively creating stakeholder-ness, and cultivating social and ecological capabilities. It provides numerous theoretical insights on legitimacy, adaptability, narratives, process-oriented collaborative planning, and among others, using in-depth case studies from historical and contemporary environmental issues including conservation, wildlife management, nuclear and tsunami disasters, and thus community risk, recovery, and resiliency. The authors are all practitioner-oriented scientists and scholars who are involved as local stakeholders in these practices. The chapters highlight their action and participatory-action research that adds deeper insights and analyses to successes, failures, and struggles in how narratives contribute to these three dimensions of effective environmental governance. It also shows how stakeholders' kinds of expertise, in a historical context, help to bridge expert and citizen legitimacy, as well as spatial and jurisdictional governance structures across scales of socio-political governance Of particular interest, both within Japan and beyond, the book shares with readers how to design and manage practical governance methods with narratives. The detailed design methods include co-imagination of historical and current SESs, designing processes for collaborative productions of knowledge and perceptions, legitimacy and stakeholder-ness, contextualization of contested experiences among actors, and the creation of evaluation standards of what is effective and effective local environmental governance. The case studies and their findings reflect particular local contexts in Japan, but our experiences of multiple natural disasters, high economic growth and development, pollutions, the nuclear power plant accident, and rapidly aging society provide shared contexts of realities and provisional insights to other societies, especially to Asian societies.

An intellectual history of America's water management philosophy Humans take more than their geological share of water, but they do not benefit from it equally. This imbalance has created an era of intense water scarcity that affects the security of individuals, states, and the global economy. For many, this brazen water grab and the social inequalities it produces reflect the lack of a coherent philosophy connecting people to the planet. Challenging this view, Jeremy Schmidt shows how water was made a "resource" that linked geology, politics, and culture to American institutions. Understanding the global spread and evolution of this philosophy is now key to addressing inequalities that exist on a geological scale. Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity details the remarkable intellectual history of America's water management philosophy. It shows how this philosophy shaped early twentieth-century conservation in the United States, influenced American international development programs, and ultimately shaped programs of global governance that today connect water resources to the Earth system. Schmidt demonstrates how the ways we think about water reflect specific public and societal values, and illuminates the process by which the American approach to water management came to dominate the global conversation about water. Debates over how human impacts on the planet are connected to a new geological epoch-the Anthropocene-tend to focus on either the social causes of environmental crises or scientific assessments of the Earth system. Schmidt shows how, when it comes to water, the two are one and the same. The very way we think about managing water resources validates putting ever more water to use for some human purposes at the expense of others.

Human behavior causes environmental problems which, in turn, affect people and whole societies. The author elaborates the role of the public in the discourse about environmental protection. As the public consists of socio-economic, legal and political actors, the behavior of those actors is of significance. With a thorough analysis of the International Social Survey Programme, this book illustrates the rocky road from the perception of environmental threats to the reaction toward them. Combining a constructivist and rational choice perspective, the author points out that there are distinctive differences between individual countries in the perception, evaluation as well as in the reaction toward environmental issues. Neither is there a uniform path from perception to reaction, nor exists a one-size-fits-all-solution.

Community forestry is an expanding model of forest management around the world. Over a quarter of forests in developing countries are now owned by or assigned to communities and there is a growing community forestry movement in developed countries such as Canada and the USA. There is, however, no economic theory of community forestry and no systematic treatment of the potential economic advantages of promoting Community forestry in developed countries. As a result much of the policy debate over forest management and forest tenure rests on confused and often erroneous views held by policy makers and encouraged by the dominant forestry industry. The Economic Theory of Community Forestry aims to address this gap and provides the tools for understanding community forestry movement as an alternative form of ownership that can mobilize community resources and encourage innovation. It uses a wide range of economic principles to show how community forestry can be economically superior to conventional forestry; provides examples from Canadian practice; and discusses the regulatory regime that policy makers must put in place to benefit from community forestry. This book will be of interest to policy makers, activists, community forestry managers and members, foresters and forestry students.

In Reclaiming Nature, leading environmental thinkers from across the globe explore the relationship between the natural world and human activities. The authors draw inspiration and lessons from diverse experiences, from community-based fishery and forestry management to innovative strategies for combating global warming. They advance a compelling new vision of environmentalism, founded on the link between the struggle to reclaim nature and the struggle for social justice.

Chinese Research Perspectives on the Environment (formerly The China Environment Yearbook), Volume 1, was written and produced by China's first environmental non-profit organization, Friends of Nature. This edition of the book combines two years of reports on China's environment from the view of civil society. With a special focus on natural and unnatural disasters, the book also covers the themes of pollution and ecological protection, urban environmental issues and livability, sustainable consumption, policy and governance, civil society and public participation, and China and the world in an environmental perspective. In this volume, readers are brought up to date on the main environmental issues and events of 2010 and 2011. Beginning in 2010, debris flows, landslides, and droughts brought about considerable debate on the human factors involved in "natural disasters" and on China's urban growth mode. The concept of urban livability is discussed within the backdrop of the waste and water crises. Several environmental incidents, including the Bohai Bay oil spill and the chromium slag pollution incident in Qujing, are also explored within the book. Meanwhile, increased public participation and environmental information transparency give reason for hope. Other articles include research and analysis on China's investments in Africa, its struggling environmental courts, public interest litigation, the controversial Xiaonanhai dam and others on the Mekong River, green supply chains, and the PM2.5 debate.

Lake of Heaven is the story of a traditional mountain village in Japan that is destroyed in the process of constructing a dam. It tells of the lives of the displaced villagers as they struggle to retain their traditional culture including their stories, dances, music, mythology, and dreams in the face of displacement, environmental destruction, and rapid modernization. Although fictional, the work is rooted in the events of actual villages in the mountains of Kyushu and Ishimure's imaginative reconstructions of their people's tales. Lake of Heaven considerably stretches the familiar Western conceptions of the novel form. Its interweaving of local stories, dreams, and myths lends it a deep sense of the Noh Drama. Gary Snyder writes that Lake of Heaven is "a remarkable text of mythopoetic quality with a Noh flavor that presents much of the ancient lore of Japan and the lore of the spirit world." The story becomes a parable for the larger world, "in which all of our old cultures and all of our old villages are becoming buried, sunken, and lost under the rising waters of the dams of industrialization and globalization."

Humanity operates like a force of nature capable of affecting the destiny of the Earth System. This epochal shift profoundly alters the relationship between humankind and the Earth, presenting the conscious, thinking human animal with an unprecedented dilemma: As human power has grown over the Earth, so has the power of nature to extinguish human life. The emergence of the Anthropocene has settled any question of the place of human beings in the world: we stand inescapably at its center. The outstanding question-which forms the impetus and focus for this book-remains: What kind of human being stands at the center of the world? And what is the nature of that world? Unlike the scientific fact of human-centeredness, this is a moral question, a question that brings theology within the scope of reflection on the critical failures of human irresponsibility. Much of Christian theology has so far flunked the test of engaging the reality of the Anthropocene. The authors of these original essays begin with the premise that it is time to push harder at the questions the Anthropocene poses for people of faith.

Madagascar is one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet, the result of 160 million years of isolation from the African mainland. More than 80% of its species are not found anywhere else on Earth. However, this highly diverse flora and fauna is threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, and the island has been classified as one of the world's highest conservation priorities. Drawing on insights from geography, anthropology, sustainable development, political science and ecology, this book provides a comprehensive assessment of the status of conservation and environmental management in Madagascar. It describes how conservation organisations have been experimenting with new forms of protected areas, community-based resource management, ecotourism, and payments for ecosystem services. But the country must also deal with pressing human needs. The problems of poverty, development, environmental justice, natural resource use and biodiversity conservation are shown to be interlinked in complex ways. Authors address key questions, such as who are the winners and losers in attempts to conserve biodiversity? And what are the implications of new forms of conservation for rural livelihoods and environmental justice?

Deep reductions in energy use and carbon emissions will not be possible within political economies that are driven by the capitalist imperatives of growth, commodification and individualization. As such, it has now become necessary to understand the relationship between capitalism and the emergence of high energy habits. Using the examples of home energy, transport and food, The Political Economy of Low Carbon Transformation articulates the relationship between the politics of economic expansion and the formation of high-energy habits at the level of family and household. The book elaborates a theory of habit and how it can contribute to this relationship. It critiques mainstream green economy and green energy prescriptions for low carbon transformation that take economic growth for granted and ignore habits formed in a material world designed and built for high energy use. The book explores the growing number of communities around the world that are engaged in collaborative efforts to reform their community and household habits in ways that are less environmentally intrusive. It assesses their potential to make an impact on national and urban low carbon political agendas. The book is aimed at a large and growing interdisciplinary audience interested in the relationship between political economy, consumption and sustainability.

In this innovative volume, the author addresses some important challenges related to the effective and equitable governance of marine protected areas (MPAs). These challenges are explored through a study of 20 MPA case studies from around the world. A novel governance analysis framework is employed to address some key questions: How can top-down and bottom-up approaches to MPA governance be combined? What does this mean, in reality, in different contexts? How can we develop and implement governance approaches that are both effective in achieving conservation objectives and equitable in fairly sharing associated costs and benefits? The author explores the many issues that these questions raise, as well as exploring options for addressing them. A key theme is that MPA governance needs to combine people, state and market approaches, rather than being based on one approach and its related ideals. Building on a critique of the governance analysis framework developed for common-pool resources, the author puts forward a more holistic and less prescriptive framework for deconstructing and analyzing the governance of MPAs. This inter-disciplinary analysis is aimed at supporting the development of MPA governance approaches that build social-ecological resilience through both institutional and biological diversity. It will also make a significant contribution to wider debates on natural resource governance, as it poses some critical questions for contemporary approaches to related research and offers an alternative theoretical and empirical approach.

The Yew Hedge by Martin Gardner from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh tells the fascinating story of some remarkable native forests and heritage trees of the European yew (Taxus baccata) located in the UK and overseas. The progeny of the trees have been planted to form a unique conservation hedge which now surrounds the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. It comprises of almost 2000 trees collected from 16 countries where they are threatened.

Many traditional approaches to rural land management are strictly sectoral, with a rigid introspective focus. Consequently the impact of silo-driven change on other land users they can often be overlooked or not appreciated. This book critically reviews why there has yet to be a clear route to upland resource management and provides insight and options for integrated transdisciplinary land management solutions for rural areas, specifically uplands. It considers the problem in order to derive appropriate solutions enhanced by a number of in-depth case studies by resource management professionals and the use of many examples of contemporary good practice from different uplands, organisations, projects and programmes.The overarching approach of the book is to provide a tool kit for those individuals, groups or organisations looking to manage the upland resource for the benefit of all. Readers are provided with a range of practical options to develop their own solutions. The book is written in such a way that readers can dip in and out of sections to plug knowledge gaps or read in its entirety for those experiencing a first foray into the complexities of upland resource management.Increasingly, rural areas are becoming recognised as a wider resource beyond traditional food, fibre and water, leading to inevitable management tensions. Goal setting, vision and strategy development, management planning, aims, objectives and prescription (actions) are considered and some of the new agendas for resource use in uplands which may be worth consideration for individual projects are explored. This comprehensive book deals with the implementation, advantages and disadvantages of a range of traditional and contemporary resource management approaches which are then expanded upon by a range of resource management professionals based on their own experiences. These case studies demonstrate the development of more effective projects and the book concludes by considering how work can be monitored and evaluated before ideas are synthesised for best practice.