George Catlin gained renown for his nineteenth-century paintings of Indians and their lands, sympathetic portraits that counterbalanced those of other Americans eager to conquer and dominate both. In this first book to probe the attitudes that shaped and constrained Catlin's career, John Hausdoerffer argues that, despite his sympathies, Catlin's work embodied the same prevailing sentiment toward Nature that sanctioned Indian removal and thus undercut his own alternate vision for westward expansion.

Some see Catlin as an ethical spokesman for Indians, others as a mere exploiter. Hausdoerffer steers a middle course, recognizing Catlin as an entrepreneur without invalidating his ethical perceptions. Yet through a close reading of Catlin's writings, Hausdoerffer adjusts interpretations of Catlin as a proto-environmentalist and friend of the Indian, arguing that contradictions in his work reveal his failure to comprehend his own complicity in Native America's demise.

Hausdoerffer examines key events from Catlin's career to show how his work consistently teeters between resistance and consent to nineteenth-century ideologies of Nature. He reviews Catlin's decision to devote his talents to Native American concerns, his journey west to document "vanishing" lifeways, his presentation of his findings to American audiences, and his performance of his work in Europe. He also shows the importance of Yellowstone National Park in understanding Catlin, given his vision for it as a means of preserving what is essential about environments and cultures.

Exploring the tension between Catlin's search for success and his awareness of the plight of his subjects, Hausdoerffer argues that Catlin's tacit acceptance of the inevitable demise of Native culture undermined his interest in fomenting political change. Catlin's lament for the vanishing Indian combined with his belief that art preserves the essence of nature ultimately contradicted his hopes for Indian justice and environmental preservation.

"Catlin's Lament" challenges views of Catlin's career as an ethical downfall, revealing instead a complexity of character that complicates views of dissent in the Jacksonian era. More important, it questions underlying assumptions of Manifest Destiny, showing that they were so deeply set in American life that even critics of the age helped perpetuate them.

Many people investigating the operation of large-scale environmentalist organizations see signs of power, knowledge and governance in their policies and projects. This collection indicates that such an analysis appears to be justified from one perspective, but not from another. The chapters in this collection show that the critics, concerned with the power of these organizations to impose their policies in different parts of the world, appear justified when we look at environmentalist visions and at organizational policies and programs. However, they are much less justified when we look at the practical operation of such organizations and their ability to generate and carry out projects intended to reshape the world.

The Amazon region is the focus of intense conflict between conservationists concerned with deforestation and advocates of agro-industrial development. This book focuses on the contributions of environmental organizations to the preservation of Brazilian Amazonia. It reveals how environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and others have fought fiercely to stop deforestation in the region. It documents how the history of frontier expansion and environmental struggle in the region is linked to Brazil's position in an evolving capitalist world-economy. It is shown how Brazil's effort to become a developed country has led successive Brazilian governments to devise development projects for Amazonia. The author analyses how globalization has led to the expansion of international commodity chains in the region, particularly for mineral ores, soybeans and beef. He shows how environmental organizations have politicized these commodity chains as weapons of conservation, through boycotting certain products, while other pro-development groups within Brazil claim that such organizations threaten Brazil's sovereignty over its own resources.

While digital media give us the ability to communicate with and know the world, their use comes at the expense of an immense ecological footprint and environmental degradation. In Finite Media Sean Cubitt offers a large-scale rethinking of theories of mediation by examining the environmental and human toll exacted by mining and the manufacture, use, and disposal of millions of phones, computers, and other devices. The way out is through an eco-political media aesthetics, in which people use media to shift their relationship to the environment and where public goods and spaces are available to all. Cubitt demonstrates this through case studies ranging from the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang to an image of Saturn taken during NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission, suggesting that affective responses to images may generate a populist environmental politics that demands better ways of living and being. Only by reorienting our use of media, Cubitt contends, can we overcome the failures of political elites and the ravages of capital.

In Watering the Revolution Mikael D. Wolfe transforms our understanding of Mexican agrarian reform through an environmental and technological history of water management in the emblematic Laguna region. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico and the United States, Wolfe shows how during the long Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) engineers' distribution of water paradoxically undermined land distribution. In so doing, he highlights the intrinsic tension engineers faced between the urgent need for water conservation and the imperative for development during the contentious modernization of the Laguna's existing flood irrigation method into one regulated by high dams, concrete-lined canals, and motorized groundwater pumps. This tension generally resolved in favor of development, which unintentionally diminished and contaminated the water supply while deepening existing rural social inequalities by dividing people into water haves and have-nots, regardless of their access to land. By uncovering the varied motivations behind the Mexican government's decision to use invasive and damaging technologies despite knowing they were ecologically unsustainable, Wolfe tells a cautionary tale of the long-term consequences of short-sighted development policies.

In Eating the Ocean Elspeth Probyn investigates the profound importance of the ocean and the future of fish and human entanglement. On her ethnographic journey around the world's oceans and fisheries, she finds that the ocean is being simplified in a food politics that is overwhelmingly land based and preoccupied with buzzwords like "local" and "sustainable." Developing a conceptual tack that combines critical analysis and embodied ethnography, she dives into the lucrative and endangered bluefin tuna market, the gendered politics of "sustainability," the ghoulish business of producing fish meal and fish oil for animals and humans, and the long history of encounters between humans and oysters. Seeing the ocean as the site of the entanglement of multiple species-which are all implicated in the interactions of technology, culture, politics, and the market-enables us to think about ways to develop a reflexive ethics of taste and place based in the realization that we cannot escape the food politics of the human-fish relationship.

This volume brings together case studies from around the globe (including China, Latin America, the Philippines, Namibia, India and Europe) to explore the history of nature conservation in the twentieth century. It seeks to highlight the state, a central actor in these efforts, which is often taken for granted, and establishes a novel concept - the nature state - as a means for exploring the historical formation of that portion of the state dedicated to managing and protecting nature. Following the Industrial Revolution and post-war exponential increase in human population and consumption, conservation in myriad forms has been one particularly visible way in which the government and its agencies have tried to control, manage or produce nature for reasons other than raw exploitation. Using an interdisciplinary approach and including case studies from across the globe, this edited collection brings together geographers, sociologists, anthropologists and historians in order to examine the degree to which sociopolitical regimes facilitate and shape the emergence and development of nature states. This innovative work marks an early intervention in the tentative turn towards the state in environmental history and will be of great interest to students and practitioners of environmental history, social anthropology and conservation studies.

In this book, the authors examine the governance of marine protected areas (MPA), and in particular they compare two different forms of governance - co-management (CM) and adaptive co-management (ACM). CM is characterized by the decentralization of the decision-making process, incorporating the governed as well as the government. ACM is characterized by the dynamic process whereby co-management decision-making is made continuously responsive to the changing ecological and socio-economic circumstances of the MPA. The authors carry out a comprehensive critical analysis of CM and ACM before applying these concepts to the case study of the Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area off Honduras to assess two successive management cycles, 2004-9 and 2008-13. The area was designated as an MPA in 1993, a governmental decision which was met with resentment by local communities. CM was introduced in 2004 to involve these local stakeholders in the decision-making process, but achieved limited success. In an attempt to deal with these deficiencies, ACM was adopted in the second management plan in 2008, but whereas the position of the local communities improved, it tipped the scales too far away from conservation. A third management plan is currently being prepared that promises to strike a better balance between ecological and socio-economic objectives. A central theme of the book is to examine how far the CCMPA adhered to the principles of CM and ACM respectively in its first two management plans.

National Parks - 'America's Best Idea' - were from the first seen as sacred sites embodying the God-given specialness of American people and American land, and from the first they were also marked as tourist attractions. The inherent tensions between these two realities ensured the parks would be stages where the country's conflicting values would be performed and contested. As pilgrimage sites embody the values and beliefs of those who are drawn to them, so Americans could travel to these sacred places to honor, experience, and be restored by the powers that had created the American land and the American enterprise. This book explores the importance of the discourse of nature in American culture, arguing that the attributes and symbolic power that had first been associated with the 'new world' and then the 'frontier' were embodied in the National Parks. Author Ross-Bryant focuses on National Parks as pilgrimage sites around which a discourse of nature developed and argues the centrality of religion in understanding the dynamics of both the language and the ritual manifestations related to National Parks. Beyond the specific contribution to a richer analysis of the National Parks and their role in understanding nature and religion in the U.S., this volume contributes to the emerging field of 'religion and the environment,' larger issues in the study of religion (e.g. cultural events and the spatial element in meaning-making), and the study of non-institutional religion.

As China strives to significantly increase its economic output, the nation faces an acute deterioration of the physical resources from which this prodigious growth springs. Major problems include water shortages, the pollution of water, high levels of carcinogens in the air, accelerating erosion, and industrial pollution. Originally published in 1984, Vaclav Smil documents and evaluates China's environmental crisis. This title will be of particular interest for students of Environmental Studies and Development Studies.

In recent years, the field of study variously called local, indigenous or traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) has experienced a crisis brought about by the questioning of some of its basic assumptions. This has included reassessing notions that scientific methods can accurately elicit and describe TEK or that incorporating it into development projects will improve the physical, social or economic well-being of marginalized peoples. The contributors to this volume argue that to accurately and appropriately describe TEK, the historical and political forces that have shaped it, as well as people's day-to-day engagement with the landscape around them must be taken into account. TEK thus emerges, not as an easily translatable tool for development experts, but as a rich and complex element of contemporary lives that should be defined and managed by indigenous and local peoples themselves.

Between 1995 and 2005, the government of Alberta undertook major reforms to the way water is governed in the arid southern part of the province. Among the most significant reforms was the imposition of moratoria on new water licenses, the introduction of a market for buying and selling existing water licenses, and the adoption of a "conservation holdback" mechanism for returning some licensed water to the environment. In Water Policy Reform in Southern Alberta, B. Timothy Heinmiller looks at how and why these (and other) reforms were adopted after nearly a century of stasis on water policy. The study analyses over three decades of policy decisions, beginning with the Progressive Conservative victory in 1972 to the last major policy reform in 2007. Applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework, process tracing methodologies, and content analysis, the author isolates, identifies and reconstructs the actors and processes that shaped over thirty years of water policy in Alberta. Water Policy Reform in Southern Alberta offers important insights on the management of natural resources and the factors influencing meaningful policy change.

A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature undertakes a comprehensive ecocritical examination of the region's literature from the foundational texts of the nineteenth century to the most recent fiction. The book begins with a consideration of the way in which Argentine Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's views of nature through the lens of the categories of "civilization" and "barbarity" from Facundo (1845) are systematically challenged and revised in the rest of the century. Subsequently, this book develops the argument that a vital part of the cultural critique and aesthetic innovations of Spanish American modernismo involve an ecological challenge to deepening discourses of untamed development from Europe and the United States. In other chapters, many of the well-established titles of regional and indigenista literature are contrasted to counter-traditions within those genres that express aspects of environmental justice, "deep ecology," the relational role of emotion in nature protectionism and conservationism, even the rights of non-human nature. Finally, the concluding chapters find that the articulation of ecological advocacy in recent fiction is both more explicit than what came before but also impacts the formal elements of literature in unique ways. Textual conventions such as language, imagery, focalization, narrative sequence, metafiction, satire, and parody represent innovations of form that proceed directly from the ethical advocacy of environmentalism. The book concludes with comments about what must follow as a result of the analysis including the revision of canon, the development of literary criticism from novel approaches such as critical animal studies, and the advent of a critical dialogue within the bounds of Spanish American environmentalist literature. A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature attempts to develop a sense of the way in which ecological ideas have developed over time in the literature, particularly the way in which many Spanish American texts anticipate several of the ecological discourses that have recently become so central to global culture, current environmentalist thought, and the future of humankind.

Originally published in 1990, Agricultural Protectionism in the Industrialized World takes a detailed look into the domestic and international agricultural policies of the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. These areas are some of the most industrialised in the world and this study focuses on the benefits, policies and costs related to protectionism of their agriculture. These papers offer detailed analysis of the evolution, objections and domestic and international implications related to agriculture in specific countries as well as taking a global view of issues such as policy, trends and costs and concluding with a discussion on the effects of free trade. This title will be of interest to students of environmental studies.

Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, and one of The Observer's 'Thirty books to help us understand the world'. Are we really to blame for the climate crisis? Over 70 per cent of global emissions come from the same 100 organisations, but fossil-fuel companies have taken no responsibility themselves. Instead, they have waged a 30-year campaign to blame individuals. The result has been disastrous for our planet. In The New Climate War, renowned scientist Michael E. Mann argues that all is not lost. He draws the battle lines between the people and the polluters - fossil-fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and petro-states - and outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change.

Environmental decisions present themselves every day in forms large and small. Should I walk to work today? What about global warming-should I write my congressperson and demand that the government do something? Should I put solar panels on my roof? Should I get a different car or turn up the temperature on the air conditioner or get water-saving fixtures for my bathroom? As environmentalism has become more complex, with potentially far-reaching impacts, it seems to be outpacing our individual understanding of the basic issues. A fresh view of modern environmentalism, Fundamentals of Practical Environmentalism challenges readers to integrate concern for the environment with the necessities of daily living. This book introduces practical environmentalism as a new approach to sustainable environmental progress. It presents a four-part framework that includes environmental degradation, resource conservation, economic progress, and personal benefit as the four pillars to address when attempting to act on behalf of the environment. The book consists of three main sections. Looking at historical and ethical perspectives, the first section examines the theoretical basis for practical environmentalism. The second section explains each of the four pillars in detail and demonstrates how to combine them into a holistic metric that guides environmental actions. The final section presents a number of case studies that run the gamut from small personal choices to the biggest and most contentious environmental dilemmas of the day. It shows how practical environmentalism via the four pillars can lead individuals toward better environmental decisions and an improved chance for true environmental progress. This timely book will be of use to activists, policymakers, researchers, resource managers, government agencies, and students alike, as well as anyone confronted with environmental choices in their daily lives.

Few nations rely upon the ocean as much as Japan for livelihood, culture and transport. The seas have long played a vital role for the Japanese, helping to support the economic and social life of a nation that possesses few resources and little arable land, and sustain a population that has nearly tripled in the last century. Fish are a distinctive feature of the Japanese diet, constituting nearly half of all animal protein consumed - the highest rate in the world. The industry itself has provided an impetus for coastal community growth and national economic development over the past century, while fisheries have worked their way into Japanese culture and customs, serving as a dominant symbol in traditional arts and folklore. This book explores the overarching rationale that motivated Japanese international fisheries policy throughout the post-war period until today, highlighting the importance of international fisheries to Japan and the stature this resource has occupied as a national interest. It provides a comparative view of Japanese foreign policy at various ocean conferences, treaty negotiations, bilateral diplomatic initiatives and other maritime relations that constitute ocean policy over half a century, and investigates the domestic constituents of national policy. Roger Smith argues that the rationale for international fisheries policy may be best viewed as deriving from Japan's unique defence strategy for its national interests: comprehensive security. Encompassing non-military elements and most importantly defence of economic interests, Japan's international fisheries policy provides an interesting case study of how comprehensive security is conceptualised and carried out. Taking a broad view of Japan's international fisheries policies from 1945 to the present, this book highlights the key trends in policy motives and means throughout the post-war period. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese studies, international and environmental law, resource management and international relations, as well as to policy makers working in the field.

Conservation for the Anthropocene Ocean: Interdisciplinary Science in Support of Nature and People emphasizes strategies to better connect the practice of marine conservation with the needs and priorities of a growing global human population. It conceptualizes nature and people as part of shared ecosystems, with interdisciplinary methodologies and science-based applications for coupled sustainability. A central challenge facing conservation is the development of practical means for addressing the interconnectedness of ecosystem health and human well-being, advancing the fundamental interdisciplinary science that underlies conservation practice, and implementing this science in decisions to manage, preserve, and restore ocean ecosystems. Though humans have intentionally and unintentionally reshaped their environments for thousands of years, the scale and scope of human influence upon the oceans in the Anthropocene is unprecedented. Ocean science has increased our knowledge of the threats and impacts to ecological integrity, yet the unique scale and scope of changes increases uncertainty about responses of dynamic socio-ecological systems. Thus, to understand and protect the biodiversity of the ocean and ameliorate the negative impacts of ocean change on people, it is critical to understand human beliefs, values, behaviors, and impacts. Conversely, on a human-dominated planet, it is impossible to understand and address human well-being and chart a course for sustainable use of the oceans without understanding the implications of environmental change for human societies that depend on marine ecosystems and resources. This work therefore presents a timely, needed, and interdisciplinary approach to the conservation of our oceans.

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.

This book provides information relevant for the conservation of biodiversity and the sound management of the coastal and forest ecosystems of the Yucatan Peninsula in the face of global change. Various aspects of the biodiversity of the Yucatan Peninsula are analyzed in an integrative manner, including phenological, ecophysiological, ecological and conservation aspects of plants and animals and their relationships with humans in coastal and forest ecosystems.

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.

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.

On the coast of Washington and British Columbia sit the misty forests and towering mountains of Cascadia. With archipelagos surrounding its shores and tidal surges of the Salish Sea trundling through the interior, this bioregion has long attracted loggers, fishing fleets, and land developers, each generation seeking successively harder to reach resources as old-growth stands, salmon stocks, and other natural endowments are depleted. Alongside encroaching developers and industrialists is the presence of a rich environmental movement that has historically built community through musical activism. From the Wobblies' Little Red Songbook (1909) to Woody Guthrie's Columbia River Songs (1941) on through to the Raging Grannies' formation in 1987, Cascadia's ecology has inspired legions of songwriters and musicians to advocate for preservation through music. In this book, Mark Pedelty explores Cascadia's vibrant eco-musical community in order to understand how environmentalist music imagines, and perhaps even creates, a more sustainable conception of place. Highlighting the music and environmental work of such various groups as Dana Lyons, the Raging Grannies, Idle No More, Towers and Trees, and Irthlingz, among others, Pedelty examines the divergent strategies—musical, organizational, and technological—used by each musical group to reach different audiences and to mobilize action. He concludes with a discussion of "applied ecomusicology," considering ways this book might be of use to activists and musicians at the community level.

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.