Providing useful insights on the use of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) in natural resource management, this book examines a number of empirical applications for several countries and a variety of natural resources. It is shown that using MCDA in the management of water, forestry, wetland and other natural resources can substantially improve the design and implementation of natural resource and environmental policies. Stakeholder involvement is also an important determinant of successful resource management and MCDA provides a useful and effective framework for getting stakeholders involved in resource management decisions. Using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis in Natural Resource Management gives in-depth analysis of the potential problems in applying these techniques, including difficulties eliciting required information, lack of suitable measures for environmental variables and the need to develop innovative methods to simplify the use of MCDA.

Cumulative global transformations, occurring daily, affect important aspects of our life. Characteristic cultural and natural heritage, including sites of priceless value, is under constant threat. There are growing pressures, of both natural and human origin, such as wars, con icts, natural or technological disasters and the effects of global climate change. These provoke the continuous degradation of many sites included in the World Heritage List. In consequence, immediate strategic measures must be taken. Natural heritage is our legacy from the past, that we inherited from our ancestors and pass on to future generations. It is vital to realize its value and protect it by all possible means, enforcing innovative and sustainable action plans that promote global international co-operation. This book aims to address speci c natural heritage sites in Europe, from West to East. The six countries of study interest are Portugal, Malta, Greece, Italy, Romania and Turkey. For each case, the corresponding current status is presented. This is accompanied by recommended action plans for protection and conservation, tra- ing initiatives that improve the public awareness of natural heritage issues and efforts to estimate the natural/environmental value of the sites. The book is the overall result of an interregional initiative aiming to promote convergence, provoke public interest and recommend action for radical changes in our attitude towards heritage conservation.

Jonathan D Oldfield provides a detailed assessment of the changing relationship between Russian society and the wider environment since the fall of the Soviet Union. Through this, he highlights the need to critically evaluate assumptions regarding the post-Soviet environment, in order to move beyond generalization and engage meaningfully with the particularities of Russia's contemporary environmental situation. The book begins by focusing on the nature of Soviet environmental legacies as a necessary backdrop to the remainder of the study. This is followed by a general examination of the relationship between economic change and pollution output during the course of the 1990s. Further chapters provide in depth analysis of recent legislative and policy developments in the area of environmental protection and an exploration of emerging pollution and environmental quality trends at both the national and regional level. In addition, the book highlights pressures that are related to Russia's engagement with the global economy.

Examine why illegal logging is so pervasiveand how this problem can be addressed In March 2002, the Yale chapter of the International Society of Tropical Foresters brought together social and natural scientists, resource managers, policymakers, community leaders, and other interested parties to share experiences, strategies, successes, and failures in addressing illegal logging and corruption. The results were the conference Illegal Logging in Tropical Forests: Ecology, Economics, and Politics of Resource Misuse and this book, which brings together analyses from the perspectives, of anthropology, economics, forestry, law, political science, and sociology. Illegal Logging in the Tropics: Strategies for Cutting Crime suggests specific policy interventions aimed at curbing illegal logging and identifying solutions to forest crime. It presents both thematic analyses of illegal logging at the global level and case studies on both the local and national levels in African, Latin American, and Asian countries. The contributors draw on their experiences in Benin, Brazil, Cameroon, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Vietnam. Illegal Logging in the Tropics: Strategies for Cutting Crime examines: global governancewith a cross-country regression analysis of deforestation and various aspects of governance global forest tradewith extensive reviews of data on global trade in forest products community perspectives on illegal loggingincluding a system dynamics model of villagers' willingness to log, a description of community involvement in broader networks of illegal trade, and a chapter that challenges the credibility of illegality as defined by a corrupt government or agency the efforts of NGOs to combat illegal logging how illegal logging is typically symptomatic of broader failures of governance Specific chapters in Illegal Logging in the Tropics: Strategies for Cutting Crime investigate: the role of monitoring in cutting forest crime whether illegal logging is better combated via law enforcement or by local communitieswith pros and cons for each approach the proximate causes of illegal logging, including access to forests and equipment, and economic factors the efforts of Transparency Internationala widely lauded organization combating corruptionto address illegal logging at the international policy level In addition, this valuable resource provides you with an essential overview of the literature on illegal logging, an in-depth analysis of the incentive structures that bring local residents to commit forest crimes, and a great deal more. Let Illegal Logging in the Tropics: Strategies for Cutting Crime be your guide to the intricacies of this increasingly urgent issue.

This book explores the opportunities and challenges associated with the legal protection of World Heritage sites in the Pacific Islands. It argues that the small Pacific representation on the World Heritage List is in part due to a lack of strong legal frameworks for heritage conservation, putting such sites under threat. Providing a comprehensive analysis of the nomination, listing and protection of the Solomon Island World Heritage Site, it examines the implementation of the World Heritage Convention in the Pacific context. It explores how the international community's broadening interpretation of the notion of 'outstanding universal value' has increased the potential for Pacific heritage to be classified as 'World Heritage'. This book also analyses the protection regime established by the Convention, and the World Heritage Committee's approach to heritage conservation, identifying challenges associated with the protection of Pacific Island heritage.

The Netherlands is one of the most prominent and innovative countries in the field of environmental planning. Since the 1990s, its government has introduced such groundbreaking schemes as Integrated Environmental Zoning, the City Environment Project and the Bubble Concept, and new approaches to coping with noise, odours, soil pollution, air pollution and safety issues. These initiatives and policy tools reflect a rapidly changing and decentralizing environmental policy, which contrasts with more conventional environmental ideologies. However, at present, little is know of these policies in the international arena. environmental planning. He shows how and why the country's planning system has moved away from its traditional top-down structure. The resulting changes have had far-reaching consequences for the traditional principles of Dutch Environmental policy. For example, contaminated soil no longer has to be cleaned up completely and national noise legislation is being dismantled in favour of local initiatives. In addition, measures for compensating excessive environmental loads are now open to discussion and environmental quality is a subject of negotiation among stakeholders. Environmental issues are no longer seen as issues that should be dealt with separately from other issues. It is recognized that environmental issues are often influenced by their local context and that policy must therefore be formulated in coherence with other area-related issues. Shared governance and participative decision-making are seen to be equally important. closely integrated with local initiatives that focus on general location-specific qualities. In this book, this development is referred to as tailor-made comprehensive planning, which relates closely to the local context, is area-specific, situation-dependent and embraces shared governance. Despite the fact that these developments in environmental planning in the Netherlands have raised a number of difficult questions, they have also created many interesting possibilities for dealing with environmental issues in complex situations.

A riveting portrait of the cultural struggles and political conflicts of proposed copper-nickel mines in Minnesota's Iron Range On an unseasonably warm October afternoon in Saint Paul, hundreds of people gathered to protest the construction of a proposed copper-nickel mine in the rural northern part of their state. The crowd eagerly listened to speeches on how the project would bring long-term risks and potentially pollute the drinking water for current and future generations. A year later, another proposed mining project became the subject of a public hearing in a small town near the proposed site. But this time, local politicians and union leaders praised the mine proposal as an asset that would strengthen working-class communities in Minnesota. In many rural American communities, there is profound tension around the preservation and protection of wilderness and the need to promote and profit from natural resources. In Mining the Heartland, Erik Kojola looks at both sides of these populist movements and presents a thoughtful account of how such political struggles play out. Drawing on over a hundred ethnographic interviews with people of the region, from members of labor unions to local residents to scientists, Kojola is able to bring this complex struggle over mining to life. Focusing on both pro- and anti-mining groups, he expands upon what this conflict reveals about the way whiteness and masculinity operate among urban and rural residents, and the different ways in which class, race, and gender shape how people relate to the land. Mining the Heartland shows the negotiation and conflict between two central aspects of the state's culture and economy: outdoor recreation in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes and the lucrative mining of the Iron Range.

Transformation of the Earth's social and ecological systems is occurring at a rate and magnitude unparalleled in human experience. Data science is a revolutionary new way to understand human-environment relationships at the heart of pressing challenges like climate change and sustainable development. However, data science faces serious shortcomings when it comes to human-environment research. There are challenges with social and environmental data, the methods that manipulate and analyze the information, and the theory underlying the data science itself; as well as significant legal, ethical and policy concerns. This timely book offers a comprehensive, balanced, and accessible account of the promise and problems of this work in terms of data, methods, theory, and policy. It demonstrates the need for data scientists to work with human-environment scholars to tackle pressing real-world problems, making it ideal for researchers and graduate students in Earth and environmental science, data science and the environmental social sciences.

How do plants make a living? Some plants are gamblers, others are swindlers. Some plants are habitual spenders while others are strugglers and miserly savers. Plants have evolved a spectacular array of solutions to the existential problems of survival and reproduction in a world where resources are scarce, disturbances can be deadly, and competition is cut-throat. Few topics have both captured the imagination and furrowed the brows of plant ecologists, yet no topic is more important for understanding the assembly of plant communities, predicting plant responses to global change, and enhancing the restoration of our rapidly degrading biosphere. The vast array of plant strategy models that characterize the discipline now require synthesis. These models tend to emphasize either life history strategies based on demography, or functional strategies based on ecophysiology. Indeed, this disciplinary divide between demography and physiology runs deep and continues to this today. The goal of this accessible book is to articulate a coherent framework that unifies life history theory with comparative functional ecology to advance prediction in plant ecology. Armed with a deeper understanding of the dimensionality of life history and functional traits, we are now equipped to quantitively link phenotypes to population growth rates across gradients of resource availability and disturbance regimes. Predicting how species respond to global change is perhaps the most important challenge of our time. A robust framework for plant strategy theory will advance this research agenda by testing the generality of traits for predicting population dynamics.

For decades conservation has been based on the donor-driven principle. It hasn't worked. For centuries, environmental pollution or degradation has been addressed by the same attitude, the Polluter Pays' principle. It hasn't worked. The cycle has to stop. But while everyone talks about using a market-driven approach, few know how to do it. Faced with the situation on the ground what do you do? What is happening? How can you engage a system so that it is self-sustaining and the people self-motivated?This book is written by the leading conservation biologists, ecologists, biologists, economists, lawyers, community and tribal specialists, financial specialists, market makers, environment specialists, climatologists, resource managers, atmospheric scientists, project developers and corporate fund managers.

Wildlife expert Eanna Ni Lamhna takes us on a tour of all things to do with our wonderful natural world: from a celebration of our fascinating birds and bees, and their powers of migration and pollination, to the thorny challenges of our time, such as climate change, sustainability and our carbon footprint. Her mantra is that learning about our wild world is not just for young children or David Attenborough fans, it is a lifelong necessary knowledge for our survival - and we need to open our eyes and our minds to the challenges that face us and our world into the future. The key is to find the balance between our needs and wants and the future of our precious planet and all its inhabitants. This brand new book raises, and discusses, questions such as; Why should we care about this natural world? Do we need and value the great outdoors now more than ever? But who wants spiders in their house? And what use are wasps anyway? Should we be worried by genetic engineering and windfarms? Biodiversity - what did it ever do for us? Does it mean the end of the world if the whales become extinct? Are global warming and climate change the same thing? What happened to the hole in the ozone layer? Is veganism the answer to sustainable food? What is carbon sequestration - just fancy words for trees? And why are carbon sinks so important? Is the mobile phone taking over our lives for good or for evil? How does a virus become a pandemic, and why?

This is the work of a man who has known and loved the Scottish Cairngorms for more than 30 years. Jim Crumley marries a poet's instincts to an uncompromising passion for the Cairngorm's arctic character, and for those wildlife tribes which thrive there. He marks nature's rhythms with thoughtful observations of bird and beast, flower and landscape. In the process he strives for a purer empathy with the wilds, seeks out the nourishing bond of man and landscape. Ultimately, the book asserts that the Cairngorms are nature's place. Crumley proposes a radical solution to safeguard the mountains from a threatening array of forces ranged against them. In his conclusion he invokes what Seton Gordon called "the spirit of the high and lonely places".

This novel text assembles some of the most intriguing voices in modern conservation biology. Collectively they highlight many of the most challenging questions being asked in conservation science today, each of which will benefit from new experiments, new data, and new analyses. The book's principal aim is to inspire readers to tackle these uncomfortable issues head-on. A second goal is to be reflective and consider how the field has reacted to challenges to orthodoxy, and to what extent have or can these challenges advance conservation science. Furthermore, several chapters discuss how to guard against confirmation bias. The overall goal is that this book will lead to greater conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity by harnessing the engine of constructive scientific scepticism in service of better results.

NOW IN PAPERBACK A journey of whim, wit, and discoveries along the Connecticut River "A great story about the mystery of friends and comfort of strangers. . . . John McPhee's birchbark canoe has nothing over the two coots' canoe." --Spencer B. Beebe, President, Ecotrust ""Two Coots in a Canoe "is--nearly to the end--a book of laughter, an account of the comic misadventures of two old friends as they float down the sunlit Connecticut River. And then come the final pages: The two friends' dark destination will surprise and shock all readers, even those with the wits of a wood tick. This remarkable book should be bought and read. Those who do will remember it for a long time." --Bil Gilbert, author of "God Gave Us This Country """ "Dave 'Bugsy' Morine has once again given us a great book." --Bill Garrett, former editor, "National Geographic Magazine" "When you finish this book, you'll want to drop everything, grab a canoe, and explore your own river." --George H. Fenwick, President, American Bird Conservancy

Global conservation efforts are celebrated for saving Guatemala's Maya Forest. This book reveals that the process of protecting lands has been one of racialized dispossession for the Indigenous peoples who live there. Through careful ethnography and archival research, Megan Ybarra shows how conservation efforts have turned Q'eqchi' Mayas into immigrants on their own land, and how this is part of a larger national effort to make Indigenous peoples into neoliberal citizens. Even as Q'eqchi's participate in conservation, Green Wars amplifies their call for material decolonization by recognizing the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the land itself.

This book focuses on Japan's policies toward international environmental issues and includes case-studies on whaling, deforestation in the tropics, and acid deposition in Asia.

Christianity has understood the environment as a gift to nurture and steward, a book of divine revelation disclosing the divine mind, a wild garden in need of cultivation and betterment, and as a resource for the creation of a new Eden. This Cambridge Companion details how Christianity, one of the world's most important religions, has shaped one of the existential issues of our age, the environment. Engaging with contemporary issues, including gender, traditional knowledge, and enchantment, it brings together the work of international scholars on the subject of Christianity and the Environment from a diversity of fields. Together, their work offers a comprehensive guide to the complex relationship between Christianity and the environment that moves beyond disciplinary boundaries. To do this, the volume explains the key concepts concerning Christianity and the environment, outlines the historical development of this relationship from antiquity to the present, and explores important contemporary issues.

French Ecocritique is the first book-length study of the culturally specific ways in which contemporary French literature and theory raise questions about nature and environment. Stephanie Posthumus's ground-breaking work brings together thinkers such as Guattari, Latour, and Serres with recent ecocritical theories to complicate what might otherwise become a reductive notion of "French ecocriticism." Working across contemporary philosophy and literature, the book defines the concept of the ecological as an attentiveness to specific nature-culture contexts and to a text's many interdiscursive connections. Posthumus identifies four key concepts, ecological subjectivity, ecological dwelling, ecological politics, and ecological ends, for changing how we think about human-nature relations. French Ecocritique highlights the importance of moving beyond canonical ecocritical texts and examining a diversity of cultural and literary traditions for new ways of imagining the environment.

What is activism? The answer is, typically, that it is a form of opposition, often expressed on the streets. Skoglund and Boehm argue differently. They identify forms of 'insider activism' within corporations, state agencies and villages, showing how people seek to transform society by working within the system, rather than outright opposing it. Using extensive empirical data, Skoglund and Boehm analyze the transformation of climate activism in a rapidly changing political landscape, arguing that it is time to think beyond the tensions between activism and enterprise. They trace the everyday renewable energy actions of a growing 'epistemic community' of climate activists who are dispersed across organizational boundaries and domains. This book is testament to a new way of understanding activism as an organizational force that brings about the transition towards sustainability across business and society and is of interest to social science scholars of business, renewable energy and sustainable development.

There are more coral species in deep, cold-waters than in tropical coral reefs. This broad-ranging treatment is the first to synthesise current understanding of all types of cold-water coral, covering their ecology, biology, palaeontology and geology. Beginning with a history of research in the field, the authors describe the approaches needed to study corals in the deep sea. They consider coral habitats created by stony scleractinian as well as octocoral species. The importance of corals as long-lived geological structures and palaeoclimate archives is discussed, in addition to ways in which they can be conserved. Topic boxes explain unfamiliar concepts, and case studies summarise significant studies, coral habitats or particular conservation measures. Written for professionals and students of marine science, this text is enhanced by an extensive glossary, online resources, and a unique collection of colour photographs and illustrations of corals and the habitats they form.

Yale's "Reports," published in 1828, is a seminal publication for understanding the development of American higher education. Giving highest priority to critical thinking skills, this fifty-six-page pamphlet played a central role in clearly delineating teaching objectives, modes of learning, and range of curriculum for the nation's colleges. In a deeply researched and well-crafted analytical narrative, David B. Potts introduces Yale's document, probes its origins and message, surveys its national reception, and assesses its import for liberal education, both then and now. His broadly contextual approach helps readers understand why the young republic, informed and encouraged by Yale's rationale, became a land of liberal arts colleges.

Today, one-quarter of all the land in Latin America is set apart for nature protection. In Nationalizing Nature, Frederico Freitas uncovers the crucial role played by conservation in the region's territorial development by exploring how Brazil and Argentina used national parks to nationalize borderlands. In the 1930s, Brazil and Argentina created some of their first national parks around the massive Iguazu Falls, shared by the two countries. The parks were designed as tools to attract migrants from their densely populated Atlantic seaboards to a sparsely inhabited borderland. In the 1970s, a change in paradigm led the military regimes in Brazil and Argentina to violently evict settlers from their national parks, highlighting the complicated relationship between authoritarianism and conservation in the Southern Cone. By tracking almost one hundred years of national park history in Latin America's largest countries, Nationalizing Nature shows how conservation policy promoted national programs of frontier development and border control.

"One of the penalties of an ecological education," wrote Aldo Leopold," is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." Ideally we would not do each other or the rest of our biotic community wrong, but we have, and still do. We need non-ideal environmental ethics for living together in this world of wounds. Ethics does not stop after wrongdoing: the aftermath of environmental harm demands ethical action. How we work to repair healthy relationality matters as much as the wounds themselves. Reparative Environmental Justice in a World of Wounds discusses the possibilities and practices of reparative environmental justice. It builds on theories of justice in political philosophy, feminist ethics, indigenous studies, and criminal justice as extended to non-ideal environmental ethics. How can reparative environmental justice provide a useful perspective on ecological restoration, human-animal entanglements, climate change, environmental racism, and traditional ecological knowledge? How can it promote just practices and policies while enabling effective opposition to business as usual? And how does reparative justice look different when we go beyond narrowly construed human conflicts to include relational repair with ecosystems, other animals, and future generations?