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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Social impact of environmental issues > General
In this extraordinary and hopeful book, leading environmentalist Tony Juniper CBE identifies the real problem at the heart of the climate and nature crises. From soil loss to wildfires, degraded rivers, mass migration and conflict, the environmental crisis is already here - and it's set to get much worse. While billionaires build remote bunkers and make plans for colonies on Mars, climate collapse impacts the most vulnerable among us first and hardest. But what this radical and ground-breaking book proves is that inequality isn't just about who suffers the consequences, it is the main obstacle blocking action - and it has been for decades. How can people lead good lives without ultimately hastening global collapse? The answer lies in fairness. We can't fight the climate and nature crises without addressing the ever-widening gaps between the rich and poor, the powerful and the weak. Drawing upon more than 40 years of experience in research, practical work, campaigning and advocacy, combined with interviews with globally renowned experts, in Just Earth Tony Juniper reveals the system shifts needed to achieve real, lasting change.
World Seas: An Environmental Evaluation, Second Edition, Volume Two: The Indian Ocean to the Pacific provides a comprehensive review of the environmental condition of the seas from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Each chapter is written by experts in the field who provide historical overviews in environmental terms, current environmental status, major problems arising from human use, informed comments on major trends, problems and successes, and recommendations for the future. The book is an invaluable worldwide reference source for students and researchers who are concerned with marine environmental science, fisheries, oceanography and engineering and coastal zone development.
Winds of Change examines the global development of the wind energy industry from a political, social movements-based perspective. It argues the wind energy industry developed successfully in certain regions and countries in large part because the environmental movement influenced its growth. Vasi then defines and analyses the three main pathways through which the environmental movement has contributed to industry growth: it has influenced the adoption and implementation of renewable energy policies, it has created consumer demand for clean energy, and it has changed the institutional logics of the energy sector. The book uses quantitative analysis to present the big picture of the global development of the wind energy industry, then draws on qualitative analyses to understand why countries such as Germany, Denmark, or Spain are world leaders in wind energy, while other countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada have a somewhat underdeveloped wind power industry. It also analyzes how the environmental movement contributed to the recent growth of the market for renewable energy certificates in the United States. The book also examines the remarkable transformation of the electricity sector in different countries, showing how environmentalists in Germany, Denmark, United States and United Kingdom contributed to wind turbine manufacturing by becoming entrepreneurs, innovators, and/or advocates, and, furthermore, how environmental groups and activists formed new companies that specialize in wind-farm development and operation, and pressured utility companies to invest in renewable energy by using tactics such as protests, lawsuits, and lobbying for stricter regulation. In conclusion, Vasi presents the main implications for future studies on industry development and social movement outcomes, as well as for the future growth of the renewable energy sector.
Restoring Layered Landscapes brings together historians, geographers, philosophers, and interdisciplinary scholars to explore ecological restoration in landscapes with complex histories shaped by ongoing interactions between humans and nature. For many decades, ecological restoration - particularly in the United States - focused on returning degraded sites to conditions that prevailed prior to human influence. This model has been broadened in recent decades, and restoration now increasingly focuses on the recovery of ecological functions and processes rather than on returning a site to a specific historical state. Nevertheless, neither the theory nor the practice of restoration has fully come to terms with the challenges of restoring layered landscapes, where nature and culture shape one another in deep and ongoing relationships. Former military and industrial sites provide paradigmatic examples of layered landscapes. Many of these sites are not only characterized by natural ecosystems worth preserving and restoring, but also embody significant political, social, and cultural histories. This volume grapples with the challenges of restoring and interpreting such complex sites: What should we aim to restore in such places? How can restoration adequately take the legacies of human use into account? Should traces of the past be left on the landscape, and how can interpretive strategies be creatively employed to make visible the complex legacies of an open pit mine or chemical weapons manufacturing plant? Restoration aims to create new value, but not always without loss. Restoration often disrupts existing ecosystems, infrastructure, and artifacts. The chapters in this volume consider what restoration can tell us more generally about the relationship between continuity and change, and how the past can and should inform our thinking about the future. These insights, in turn, will help foster a more thoughtful approach to human-environment relations in an era of unprecedented anthropogenic global environmental change.
'A brilliant synthesis of ecology and economics that provides a sure guide to a sustainable future. It is a must for all environmentalists and economists.'Charles Birch'Written by an impressive list of experts across a number of disciplines, this readable text provides not only analysis but vigorous criticism-and answers.'Robyn Williams'This book is such a useful guide to responsible decision-making that it should be supplied in bulk to senior government officials and managers in the private sector.'Ian Lowe'This is a fine contribution to ecological economics coming from Australia, and of interest worldwide.'Herman E DalyHuman well-being is wholly dependent upon the continued good health of the Earth s ecosystems. Human behaviour as it interacts with the biophysical environment is enormously complex, as governments (and individuals) who must make decisions about resource use are becoming increasingly aware. Human Ecology, Human Economy provides the basic concepts and tools for understanding how to analyse that interaction.The book is designed to be used as a text for undergraduate and graduate students in environmental studies, human and social ecology, ecological economics, futures studies, and science and technology studies. It is also intended for interested members of the public and for policy-makers working on environmental issues, especially where these intersect with economic policy.Human Ecology, Human Economy not only covers the basic concepts, but also moves to some of the frontiers of thinking in several case studies. It uses a problem and solution oriented approach which crosses disciplinary boundaries, drawing together elements from biology, economics, philosophy and political science.Professor Mark Diesendorf is Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney and Vice President of the Sustainable Energy Industries Council of Australia. Among the books he has edited are The Magic Bullet and Energy And People.Dr Clive Hamilton is Executive Director of the Australia Institute, Canberra and teaches in the Public Policy Program at the Australian National University. His books include Capitalist Industrialisation In Korea, The Mystic Economist and The Economic Dynamics Of Australian Industry.
Megadrought and Collapse is the first book to treat in one volume the current paleoclimatic and archaeological evidence of megadrought events coincident with major historical examples of societal collapse. Previous works have offered multi-causal explanations for climate change, from overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, and warfare to poor leadership and failure to adapt to environmental changes. In earlier synthetic studies of major instances of collapse, the archaeological record has often not been considered. Included in this volume are nine case studies that span the globe and stretch over fourteen thousand years, from the paleolithic hunter-gatherer collapse of the 12th millennium BC to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer capital at Angkor. Together, the studies constitute a primary sourcebook in which principal investigators in archaeology and paleoclimatology present their original research. Each case study juxtaposes the latest paleoclimatic evidence of a megadrought (so-called for its severity and its decades to centuries-long duration) with available archaeological records of synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from all five archival paleoclimate proxy sources: lake, marine, and glacial cores, speleothems (cave stalagmites), and tree rings. The archaeological records in each case are the most recently retrieved. The editor derives two arguments from the discussions in the volume: (1) Societal collapse would not have occurred without megadrought. Attendant social disruptions may have been present in some instances. Nonetheless, megadrought rendered agriculture-based societies unsustainable in different regions, periods, and levels of social complexity, from simple foraging to vast empires. (2) A set of adaptive responses can be observed across the nine cases: adaptive collapse in the face of insurmountable megadrought, region-wide and settlement abandonment, and habitat tracking to sustainable agricultural environments. The evidence points to a paradigm shift: the insertion of another major force, natural climate variability-megadrought-into the global historical record.
Water scarcity is the next big climate crisis. Water stress – not just scarcity, but also water-quality issues caused by pollution – is already driving the first waves of climate refugees. Rivers are drying out before they meet the oceans, and ancient lakes are disappearing. Fourteen of the world’s twenty megacities are now experiencing water scarcity or drought conditions. It’s increasingly clear that human mismanagement of water is dangerously unsustainable, for both ecological and human survival. And yet in recent years some key countries have been quietly and very successfully addressing water stress. How are Singapore and Israel, for example – both severely water-stressed countries – not in the same predicament as Chennai or California, but now boast surplus water? What can we learn from them and how can we use this knowledge to turn things around for the wider global community? Do we have to stop eating almonds and asparagus grown in the deserts of California and Peru? Could desalination of seawater be the answer? Or rainwater capture? Are some of the wilder ‘solutions’ – such as the plan to tow icebergs to Cape Town – pure madness, or necessary innovation? Award-winning environmental journalist Tim Smedley will travel the world to meet the experts, the victims, the activists and pioneers, to find out how we can mend the water table that our survival depends upon. His book will take an unblinking look at the current situation and how we got there. And then look to the solutions. The Last Drop promises to offer a fascinating, universally relevant account of the environmental and human factors that have led us to this point, and suggests practical ways in which we might address the crisis, before it’s too late.
An engaging, personalized look at the interplay between people and nature in the northeastern and midwestern United States, from prehistory to the present. The Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States provide a fascinating case study for the emergent field of environmental history. These regions, with their varied resources, were central to the early economic success of the nation. Consequently, the early industries in these regions altered and depleted the landscape as people changed their locations and occupations. Fishing and whaling on the northeastern coast have given way to tourism and sailing. The great stands of timber around the Great Lakes have been replaced by farms and dairies. The textile mills, powered by the falls of the Piedmont and once yielding wealth, now stand empty. That humans shape their environment and, in turn, must respond to the consequences is broadly obvious. Using the voices of historical figures, both notable and obscure, this book brings to life the interaction between humans and their environments and illustrates the consequences of those interactions. Part of ABC-CLIO's unique Nature and Human Societies series, this book enables readers to better understand humanity's effect on the environment. Maps and photographs show environmental regions, population movement, and changes to the environment by humans Separate listing of primary sources for all chapter topics, along with a bibliography and glossary
A positive vision is emerging - a community-based, but globally linked and co-ordinated society, a global human family looking after each other and the Earth. eGaia describes starting points and next big steps where the starting points join and link up. It clarifies the vision, gives background, organising principles, and a light fictional picture of a sustainable world.
Gavin Cooke is a former journalist and television researcher. He studied Energy and Environment while at University in Newcastle and is based in the North East Of England.
Climate change adaptation. A hope-fuelled necessity on the road to a transformed world? Or the last act of the doom-merchant who has given up? There are great ways to adapt to the climate crisis that confronts us, but there are disastrous ways too. In this book, Morgan Phillips takes us from the air-conditioned pavements of Doha and the 'cool rooms' of Paris, to the fog catchers of Morocco and the agro-foresters of Nepal. He makes an often-neglected topic engaging and relatable at precisely the moment the climate movement is waking up to it. A just transition is at stake. Great Adaptations is a provocation, an invitation, and an urgent call to action. If we don't shape what adaptation is, someone else will. 'My earnest hope is that this book will be a turning of the tide; and that, with the silence broken, the world can finally begin the painful process of awakening properly to climate reality... including to the reality of how we must now adapt transformatively, if we are to have any chance of heading off eco-induced collapses.' Prof. Rupert Read, University of East Anglia.
This interdisciplinary volume revisits Adorno's lesser-known work, Minima Moralia, and makes the case for its application to the most urgent concerns of the 21st century. Contributing authors situate Adorno at the heart of contemporary debates on the ecological crisis, the changing nature of work, the idea of utopia, and the rise of fascism. Exploring the role of critical pedagogy in shaping responses to fascistic regimes, alongside discussions of extractive economies and the need for leisure under increasingly precarious working conditions, this volume makes new connections between Minima Moralia and critical theory today. Another line of focus is the aphoristic style of Minima Moralia and its connection to Adorno's wider commitment to small and minor literary forms, which enable capitalist critique to be both subversive and poetic. This critique is further located in Adorno's discussion of a utopia that is reliant on complete rejection of the totalising system of capitalism. The distinctive feature of such a utopia for Adorno is dependent upon individual suffering and subsequent survival, an argument this book connects to the mutually constitutive relationship between ecological destruction and right-wing authoritarianism. These timely readings of Adorno's Minima Moralia teach us to adapt through our survival, and to pursue a utopia based on his central ideas. In the process, opening up theoretical spaces and collapsing the physical borders between us in the spirit of Adorno's lifelong project.
Environment and Society connects the core themes of environmental studies to the urgent issues and debates of the twenty-first century. In an era marked by climate change, rapid urbanization, and resource scarcity, environmental studies has emerged as a crucial arena of study. Assembling canonical and contemporary texts, this volume presents a systematic survey of concepts and issues central to the environment in society, such as: social mobilization on behalf of environmental objectives; the relationships between human population, economic growth and stresses on the planet's natural resources; debates about the relative effects of collective and individual action; and unequal distribution of the social costs of environmental degradation. Organized around key themes, with each section featuring questions for debate and suggestions for further reading, the book introduces students to the history of environmental studies, and demonstrates how the field's interdisciplinary approach uniquely engages the essential issues of the present.
Nature, Power and the Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire was one of the greatest early modern world empires, stretching from the outskirts of Vienna in the west to the Caucasus Mountains in the east and from the tip of Arabian Peninsula in the south to the Ukrainian steppes in the north, covering an area of 3.81 million square kilometres. The Ottomans were remarkable not just for their political and military success but also for their desire and ability to understand, adapt, modify and manage different environments. This edited volume is the first collective effort to take an original look at the Ottomans through the lens of environmental history. In its wide-ranging essays, environmental perspectives illuminate diverse historical processes and events in the long history of the Ottoman Empire. The essays thus offer new answers to old questions - but also ask new questions - about the ways the Ottomans related to, depended on, thought about and interacted with the natural environment. It will appeal to anyone interested in the environmental history of one of the world's largest and most durable empires, the longest-lasting in the history of the Muslim world.
Microclimate for Cultural Heritage: Measurement, Risk Assessment, Conservation, Restoration, and Maintenance of Indoor and Outdoor Monuments, Third Edition, presents the latest on microclimates, environmental issues and the conservation of cultural heritage. It is a useful treatise on microphysics, acting as a practical handbook for conservators and specialists in physics, chemistry, architecture, engineering, geology and biology who focus on environmental issues and the conservation of works of art. It fills a gap between the application of atmospheric sciences, like the thermodynamic processes of clouds and dynamics of planetary boundary layer, and their application to a monument surface or a room within a museum. Sections covers applied theory, environmental issues and conservation, practical utilization, along with suggestions, examples, common issues and errors.
World Seas: An Environmental Evaluation, Second Edition, Volume Three: Ecological Issues and Environmental Impacts covers global issues relating to our seas, including a biological description of the coast and continental shelf waters, the development and use of the coast, landfills and their effects, pollutant discharges over time, the effects of over-fishing, and the management methods and techniques used to ensure continued ecosystem functioning. The relative importance of water-borne and airborne routes differ in different parts of the world is explored, along with extensive coverage of major habitats and species groups, governmental, education and legal issues, fisheries effects, remote sensing, climate change and management. This book is an invaluable, worldwide reference source for students and researchers concerned with marine environmental science, fisheries, oceanography and engineering and coastal zone development.
Marine Ecotoxicology: Current Knowledge and Future Issues is the first unified resource to cover issues related to contamination, responses, and testing techniques of saltwater from a toxicological perspective. With its unprecedented focus on marine environments and logical chapter progression, this book is useful to graduate students, ecotoxicologists, risk assessors, and regulators involved or interested in marine waters. As human interaction with these environments increases, understanding of the pollutants and toxins introduced into the oceans becomes ever more critical, and this book builds a foundation of knowledge to assist scientists in studying, monitoring, and making decisions that affect both marine environments and human health. A team of world renowned experts provide detailed analyses of the most common contaminants in marine environments and explain the design and purpose of toxicity testing methods, while exploring the future of ecotoxicology studies in relation to the world's oceans. As the threat of increasing pollution in marine environments becomes an ever more tangible reality, Marine Ecotoxicology offers insights and guidance to mitigate that threat.
Case Studies for Integrating Science and the Global Environment is designed to help students of the environment and natural resources make the connections between their training in science and math and today's complex environmental issues. The book provides an opportunity for students to apply important skills, knowledge, and analytical tools to understand, evaluate, and propose solutions to today's critical environmental issues. The heart of the book includes four major content areas: water resources; the atmosphere and air quality; ecosystem alteration; and global resources and human needs. Each of these sections features in-depth case studies covering a range of issues for each resource, offering rich opportunities to teach how various scientific disciplines help inform the issue at hand. Case studies provide readers with experience in interpreting real data sets and considering alternate explanations for trends shown by the data. This book helps prepare students for careers that require collaboration with stakeholders and co-workers from various disciplines.
The Diverse Faces of Bacillus cereus elucidates all characteristics of this microorganism, from its environmental and ecologic relevance, to its veterinary involvement, its clinical settings, most common B. cereus associated food poisoning episodes, and the newest airway disease pictures mimicking the inhalation of anthrax. Due to its environmental distribution, B. cereus may cause serious, even fatal human diseases. The organism shows many diverse faces, as it is not only a veterinary pathogen, but also used as a biocontrol agent to control vegetable decay due to its natural antimicrobial properties. Once considered as a mere colonizer or contaminant, Bacillus cereus is nowadays acquiring increasing importance as an agent of nosocomial infections. The book's target audience is familiar with this opportunistic pathogen and will benefit from this clear compendium on the classical and molecular techniques and procedures that may be adopted or followed to correctly identify this intriguing multi-faceted microorganism.
Rural Water Systems for Multiple Uses and Livelihood Security covers the technological, institutional, and policy choices for building rural water supply systems that are sustainable from physical, economic, and ecological points-of-view in developing countries. While there is abundant theoretical discourse on designing village water supply schemes as multiple use systems, there is too little understanding of the type of water needs in rural households, how they vary across socio-economic and climatic settings, the extent to which these needs are met by the existing single use water supply schemes, and what mechanisms exist to take care of unmet demands. The case studies presented in the book from different agro ecological regions quantify these benefits under different agro ecological settings, also examining the economic and environmental trade-offs in maximizing benefits. This book demonstrates how various physical and socio-economic processes alter the hydrology of tanks in rural settings, thereby affecting their performance, also including quantitative criteria that can be used to select tanks suitable for rehabilitation.
As Dominant Western Worldviews (DWWs) proliferate through ongoing structures of globalization, neoliberalism, extractive capitalism, and colonialism, they inevitably marginalize those deemed as 'Other' (Indigenous, Black, Minority Ethnic, non-Western communities and non-human 'Others', including animals, plants, technologies, and energies). Environmental Education (EE) is well-positioned to trouble and minimize the harmful human impacts on social and ecological systems, yet the field is susceptible to how DWWs constrain and discipline what counts as viable knowledge, with a consequence of this being the loss of situated knowledges. To understand the relationships between DWW and situated knowledges and to thread an assemblage of ontological views that exist in unique contexts and nations, authors in this book take up decolonizing methodologies that expand across theories of Indigenous Knowledges (IK), Traditional Ecological Knowledges (TEK), two-eyed seeing, hybridity, and posthumanism. As EE opens to emplaced and situated socio-cultural and material stories, it opens to opportunities to attend more meaningfully to planetary social and ecological crisis narratives through contingent, contextualised, and relevant actions.
Examines how pastoral peoples imagine, or even design, their futures under the pressure of changing environments and large-scale government projects. In East Africa and beyond, pastoral groups find themselves and their livelihoods under increasing threat when dealing with rapid environmental change. On the one hand, they contemplate major upheaval as a result of landscape and climate change on a scale never seen before. At the same time, these often-marginalised groups find themselves subsumed by the wider interests of national political economies prioritising new investment in land as well as encouraging tourism. This book investigates one such group - the nomadic pastoralists in East Pokot in north-west Kenya - and traces their social and ecological transformation over the past two hundred years to show how modern challenges are linked to the past history and also shape the perceptions of pastoral futures. In East Pokot the grass bush savannah upon which the pastoral lifestyle depends has strongly declined over a long period of time, with encroachment of acacia. Though traditionally cattle-rearing, its people have been forced to diversify into raising other browsing animals as well as cattle husbandry. The development efforts of the Kenyan government to use natural resources have also threatened their environment and their way of life. Bringing a long view to the history of human-environmental relations, the author reveals a more complex picture of change that, contrary to earlier assumptions, is not due exclusively to the pastoralists' pasture management, but also to the extinction of wildlife populations in the region, which were hunted heavily in colonial times. Attempts to move beyond Pokot territory, to the regions west of Lake Baringo and to the hard-fought Laikipia Plateau, have often been compromised by violent conflicts. While a younger generation looks to develop new sources of income through the job opportunities created by geothermal energy production, and diversify into other agricultural activities, this has also brought a dynamic social transformation: increasing production and sale of alcohol, decreasingly nomadic lifestyle, growing differences between the older and younger generations, and so on. Contributing to debates on future rural Africa, ecological history and environmental change, the book will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, historians and development scholars. Published in association with the Collaborative Research Centre FUTURE RURAL AFRICA, funded by the German Research Council (DFG). |
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