![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Social impact of environmental issues > General
The current warming of the Earth is leading to important social questions being raised: How warm will the Earth become and when? What effect will it have on human life? Should we try to slow down these trends? If so, how do we do this while balancing the economic needs of society? Global Climate Change and Human Life attempts to answer some of these questions, providing facts and theories that will help the reader formulate rational opinions and gain a new way to think about the complexities of the subject and the future of the global environment and climate. Divided into three parts, this book covers the composition of the atmosphere, the workings of the earth's climate and how the changing global climate will affect the environment and how that will affect human life. Featuring numerous questions and exercises and worked examples throughout the text, this book is intended for undergraduate students taking courses in global climate change. Based on a course that the author has given to students from a number of subject disciplines the book will appeal to all needing a well-written, unified introduction to the subject.
Y O U C A N M A K E A P O S I T I V E D I F F E R E N C E This inspiring, easy-to-use guide will help kickstart any activist's journey. From supporting independent businesses and amplifying marginalised voices, to community gardening and giving to a food bank, there's something you can do to make a positive change - whether you have a day, an hour, or just five minutes to spare. Divided into three parts, Everyday Activism suggests 60 small actions that can slip easily into any busy schedule. If you want to change the world for the better but are unsure how, this is the perfect place to begin.
The impact of global environmental change on surface water resources affects gendered livelihoods, governance and development. The deterioration of water quality, rising temperatures, and changes in the seasonality, quantity, and duration of precipitation increasingly alters human, animal and plant demand for water resources. This edited volume explores how a feminist political ecology framework can bring new and exciting insights to the study of livelihoods dependent on vulnerable rivers, watersheds, wetlands and coastal environments. Bringing together political ecologists and feminist scholars from multiple disciplines, the book develops solution-oriented advances to theory, policy and planning to tackle the complexity of these global environmental changes.Using applied research on the contemporary management of rivers, watersheds and coastal wetlands in the South Pacific, Central and South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and North America, the authors draw on a variety of methodological perspectives and new theoretical approaches to demonstrate the importance of considering multiple layers of social difference as produced by and central to the effective governance and local management of water resources. This unique collection employs a unifying feminist political ecology framework that emphasizes the ways that gender interacts with other social and geographical locations of water resource users. In doing so, the book further questions the normative gender discourses that underlie policies and practices surrounding water management and climate change, large-scale development and dams, resource knowledge and expertise, and critical livelihood studies. The book should be of interest to students and scholars of environment studies, development studies, anthropology, feminist and environmental geography, as well as women's and gender studies.
"Race, Space, and the Law" belongs to a growing field of
exploration that spans critical geography, sociology, law,
education, and critical race and feminist studies. Writers who
share this terrain reject the idea that spaces, and the arrangement
of bodies in them, emerge naturally over time. Instead, they look
at how spaces are created and the role of law in shaping and
supporting them. They expose hierarchies that emerge from, and in
turn produce, oppressive spatial categories.
Climate predictions - and the computer models behind them - play a key role in shaping public opinion and our response to the climate crisis. Some people interpret these predictions as 'prophecies of doom' and some others dismiss them as mere speculation, but the vast majority are only vaguely aware of the science behind them. This book gives a balanced view of the strengths and limitations of climate modeling. It covers historical developments, current challenges, and future trends in the field. The accessible discussion of climate modeling only requires a basic knowledge of science. Uncertainties in climate predictions and their implications for assessing climate risk are analyzed, as are the computational challenges faced by future models. The book concludes by highlighting the dangers of climate 'doomism', while also making clear the value of predictive models, and the severe and very real risks posed by anthropogenic climate change.
How do scientists, scholars, and other experts engage with the general public and with the communities affected by their work or residing in their sites of study? Where are the fine lines between public scholarship, civic engagement, and activism? Must academics 'give back' once they collect data and publish results? In this volume, authors from a wide range of disciplines examine these relationships to assess how they can be fruitful or challenging. Describing the methodological and ethical issues that experts must consider when carrying out public scholarship, this book includes a checklist for critical factors of success in engagement and an examination of the role of digital social media in science communication. Illustrated by a range of case studies addressing environmental issues (climate change, resource use, post-disaster policy) and education, it offers an investigation into the levels and ways in which scholars can engage, and how and whether academics and experts who engage in community work and public scholarship are acknowledged and rewarded for doing so by their institutions. Also bringing into the debate the perspective of citizens who have collaborated with academics, the book offers an exploration of the democratizing potential of participatory action research.
Here is an indispensable text and reference book for anyone interested in a systems approach to environmental studies. It will be useful not only to geographers but also to ecologists and other environmental scientists; planners; economists and other social scientists; philosophers; and applied mathematicians. Bennett and Chorley's book has a number of broad aims: first, to employ the systems approach to provide an interdisciplinary focus on environmental structures and techniques; second, to use this approach to aid in developing the interfacing of social and economic theory with physical and biological theory; and third, to investigate the implications of this interfacing for human response to current environmental dilemmas, and hence to expose the technological and social bases of values which underlie our use of natural resources. Interpreting the "environment" so as to embrace physical, biological, man-made, social, and economic reality, the authors show that the systems approach provides a powerful vehicle for the statement of environmental situations of ever-growing temporal and spatial magnitude, and for reducing the areas of uncertainty in our increasingly complex decision making arenas. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Original voices from across the solarpunk movement, which positions ingenuity, generativity, and community as ways to resist hopelessness in response to the climate crisis. Almanac for the Anthropocene collects original voices from across the solarpunk movement, which positions ingenuity, generativity, and community as beacons of resistance to the hopelessness often inspired by the climate crisis. To point toward practical implementation of the movement's ideas, it gathers usable blueprints that bring together theory and practice. The result is a collection of interviews, recipes, exercises, DIY instructions, and more-all of it amounting to a call to create hope through action. Inspired by a commitment to the idea that there can be no environmental justice without decolonial and racial justice, Almanac for the Anthropocene unites in a single volume both academic and practical responses to environmental crisis.
As progress towards a greater knowledge in sustainability science continues, the question of how better to integrate scientific progress with actual decisions made by practitioners remains paramount. This book aims to help close the gap between science and practice. Based on a two year collaborative project between Harvard and Clark Universities, the book takes as its focus the vulnerability and resilience of people around the world to the effects of environmental change, a mature area of research in which one might expect the gap between science and policy/practice to have been extensively bridged. Integrating Science and Policy presents analysis of past studies, interviews conducted with the producers and users of scientific knowledge, and case studies performed by leading scholars across a spectrum of international settings and political systems. Crucially, the authors identify new directions and tools for closing the gap between science and policy across a range of situations and societies. The result is an illuminating collection of studies and analyses that suggest to researchers, students, practitioners, and policy-makers alike how best to ensure that high quality environmental research informs good environmental policy and practice.
A bestseller on Amazon.com within months of its first release, Alan AtKisson's debut book quickly became a modern classic of sustainability literature. Global companies, grassroots groups, university courses, government agencies, and even the US Army ordered it by the box. Now fully revised and updated, Believing Cassandra: How to be an Optimist in a Pessimist's World is even more relevant, fresh, and motivating than when it first appeared in 1999. In a style that's refreshingly candid and vivid, with unforgettable personal anecdotes, AtKisson provides us with a bridge over the sea of despair, and shows us how to catch the wave to an enticing, sustainable future. He empowers the reader to join the pioneers who created the ideas, techniques and practices of sustainable living - the people who prove Cassandra's warnings wrong, by believing in them, and taking strategic action.
Facing droughts, floods, and water security challenges, society is increasingly forced to develop new policies and practices to cope with the impacts of climate change. From taken-for-granted values and perceptions to embodied, existential modes of engaging our world, human perspectives impact decision-making and behaviour. The Wonder of Water explores how human experience - including our cultural paradigms, value systems, and personal biases - impacts decisions around water. In many ways, the volume expands on the growing field of water ethics to include questions around environmental aesthetics, psychology, and ontology. And yet this book is not simply for philosophers. On the contrary, a specific aim is to explore how more informed philosophical dialogue will lead to more insightful public policies and practices. Case studies describe specific architectural and planning decisions, fisheries policies, urban ecological restorations, and more. The overarching phenomenological perspective, however, means that these discussions emerge within a sensibility that recognizes the foundational significance of human embodiment, culture, language, worldviews, and, ultimately, moral attunement to place.
Along with windstorms, floods are the most common and widespread of all natural disasters. Although they can often be predicted, they cause loss of life, damage and destruction, as many urban communities are located near coasts and rivers. In terms of victims, floods are responsible for more than half the deaths caused by natural catastrophes. As flood events appear to be rapidly increasing world-wide, an advanced and universal approach to urban flooding and how to manage will help reduce flood impact. This textbook integrates expertise from disciplines such as hydrology, sociology, architecture, urban design, construction and water resources engineering. The subject is approached from an international perspective and case studies, exercises, expert advice and literature recommendations are included to support the theory and illustrations. Developed by a team of specialists, this volume is intended for urban flood management education of hydrology, geography, civil and environmental engineering, and management students at university level. Moreover, professionals will find this book useful as a reference. More information on flood resilience and urban flood management can be found at www.floodresiliencegroup.org For a preview, please go to http: //issuu.com/crcpress/docs/urban_flood_management
Is climate catastrophe inevitable? In a world of extreme inequality, rising nationalism and mounting carbon emissions, the future looks gloomy. Yet one group of environmentalists, the 'ecomodernists', are optimistic. They argue that technological innovation and universal human development hold the keys to an ecologically vibrant future. However, this perspective, which advocates fighting climate change with all available technologies - including nuclear power, synthetic biology and others not yet invented - is deeply controversial because it rejects the Green movement's calls for greater harmony with nature. In this book, Jonathan Symons offers a qualified defence of the ecomodernist vision. Ecomodernism, he explains, is neither as radical or reactionary as its critics claim, but belongs in the social democratic tradition, promoting a third way between laissez-faire and anti-capitalism. Critiquing and extending ecomodernist ideas, Symons argues that states should defend against climate threats through transformative investments in technological innovation. A good Anthropocene is still possible - but only if we double down on science and humanism to push beyond the limits to growth.
This is a book about simplicity - not destitution, not parsimoniousness, not self-denial - but the restoration of wealth in the midst of an affluence in which the author believes we are starving the spirit. It has to do with having less and enjoying more - enjoying time to do the work you love, enjoying time to spend with your family, enjoying time to pursue creative projects, enjoying time for good eating, enjoying time just to be. Another theme of the book concerns the future of our home, the Earth. Our grandchildren will inherit an Earth with less than 20 per cent of its original forests still intact, with most of the readily available freshwater already spoken for, with most of the wetlands and reef systems either destroyed or degraded. Sooner or later, the author believes, a more frugal lifestyle will not only be desirable - it will become an imperative.
Introduction to Environmental Toxicology is designed as a concise text, introducing students to the fundamentals of this important subject. It covers the origin, characterization and environmental distribution of the major pollutants, and provides an explanation of their implications for human morbidity via the development of cancer, cardiovascular disease, pulmonary dysfunction and neurological conditions. Considering impacts on biodiversity, such as effects from acid rain, heavy metals and selected anthropogenic compounds, this book: - Covers biogenic contaminants, gases and particulates, organic pollutants, petroleum, heavy metals, complex polymers and radiation; - Considers the impact of pollutants across human health, biodiversity, water and food safety; - Includes questions, further reading and case studies to spark discussion in tutorials. Covering all the major biological toxins and pollutants, this book forms a true introduction to the subject for undergraduates studying environmental toxicology and related subjects.
In Virtual Activism: Sexuality, the Internet, and a Social Movement in Singapore, cultural anthropologist Robert Phillips provides a detailed, yet accessible, ethnographic case study that looks at the changes in LGBT activism in Singapore in the period 1993-2019. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted with activist organizations and individuals, Phillips illustrates key theoretical ideas - including illiberal pragmatics and neoliberal homonormativity - that, in combination with the introduction of the Internet, have shaped the manner by which LGBT Singaporeans are framing and subsequently claiming rights. Phillips argues that the activism engaged in by LGBT Singaporeans for governmental and societal recognition is in many respects virtual. His analysis documents how the actions of activists have resulted in some noteworthy changes in the lives of LGBT Singaporeans, but nothing as grand as some would have hoped, thus indexing the "not quite" aspect of the virtual. Yet, Virtual Activism also demonstrates how these actions have encouraged LGBT Singaporeans to fight even harder for their rights, signalling the "possibilities" that the virtual holds.
Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature. Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western policy, theory and literature, Lisa Garforth explains how its developing entanglement with popular culture and mainstream politics has shaped successive green future visions and initiatives. In the face of apocalyptic, despairing or indifferent responses to contemporary ecological dilemmas, utopias and the utopian method seem more necessary than ever. This distinctive reading of green political thought and culture will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to all interested in why green utopias continue to matter in the cultivation of ecological values and the emergence of new forms of human and nonhuman well-being.
This book presents a 360-degree picture of the world of insects and explores how their existence affects our lives: the "good, bad, and ugly" aspects of their interactions with humankind. It provides a lucid introductory text for beginning undergraduate students in the life sciences, particularly those pursuing beginner courses in entomology, agriculture, and botany.
Our oceans are suffering under the impacts of climate change. Despite the critical role that oceans play in climate regulation, international climate law and the law of the sea are developed as two different, largely separate, legal regimes. The main objective of this book is to assess how the law of the sea can be interpreted, developed and applied to support the objectives of the United Nations Climate Regime. By identifying the potential and constraints of the law of the sea regime in supporting and complementing the climate regime in the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, this book offers a new perspective on the law of the sea and its capacity to evolve to respond to systemic challenges, and its potential to adapt and ensure a resilient and sustainable future.
The prospect of international conflict over water has long been the subject of academic and popular concern, but subnational political conflict is considerably more common, and almost certainly imposes greater economic and environmental costs. Indeed, subnational hydropolitics are an important feature of several large countries, including the United States, India, and China. Moreover, disputes between water users in shared river basins have often persisted despite repeated attempts by central governments to resolve them through both persuasion and coercion. Yet despite the growing threat of water scarcity around the world, little research exists on subnational politics of shared water resources. This book attempts to fill the gap by explaining how and why hydropolitics play out within countries, as well as between them. Subnational Hydropolitics re-examines the issue of water conflict by examining conflicts at the subnational rather than international level. By examining several in-depth case studies of both conflict and cooperation, Scott Moore argues that increasing subnational water conflict is driven by two inter-linked forces, identity politics, which gives subnational politicians a reason to compete over shared water resources; and political decentralization, which provides them with the tools to do so. To understand politics at the subnational level, the book blends insights from both the environmental governance and comparative politics literatures. By examining the challenges many countries face in achieving cooperation over shared water resources, the book helps to shed light on different mechanisms and processes for solving cooperation problems at the regional scale lessons relevant to tackling a wide range of transboundary environmental problems, including air pollution, urbanization, and ecosystem protection. But at its core, this book promises a definitive contribution to the growing sub-field of environmental politics, centered on understanding how different countries attempt to solve the problems inherent in governing water resources in shared river basins.
Through close examination of the correlation between tropicality and "otherness" and of science as a means of colonial appropriation, this volume offers a new interpretation of the history of colonial India and a critical contribution to the understanding of environmental history and the tropical world. David Arnold is professor emeritus of history at University of Warwick. "Arnold deftly untangles and analyses the nature of the connections between literary representations of the land, the development of botanical knowledge, and the consolidation of colonial power." "-Times Literary Supplement " "A rich study of changing British perceptions of India. . . . Arnold's arguments about how scientific travelers of the early nineteenth century reimagined India as a place of death and tropicality are nuanced and powerful." "-Environmental History"
"The Man Who Planted Trees" is the inspiring story of David
Milarch's quest to clone the biggest trees on the planet in order
to save our forests and ecosystem--as well as a hopeful lesson
about how each of us has the ability to make a difference. "From the Hardcover edition."
This book provides students in human geography with a vital resource - a collection of writings critical to understanding the field as a whole and revealing the interactions of its component parts. It is designed to give students ready access to the literature their studies are most likely to lead them to consult. The book is divided into five parts. Parts I and II describe the nature of the enterprise and show the origins and current state of thinking on central issues. Part III is concerned with interactions between nature, culture and landscape. Part IV considers area differences and geographic units such as region, place and locality. Part V provides insights into the concepts of space, time and space-time. The editors have provided a general introduction, introductions to each part and contextual notes for each chapter. Each part concludes with sections of further reading by subject and the volume ends with a time chart of the main developments in geography. This collection of seminal articles aims to be revealing, challenging and engaging. It amply demonstrates why human geography is a subject worthy of the student's engagement and provides a vital and rewarding resource for its understanding. |
You may like...
Extremisms In Africa
Alain Tschudin, Stephen Buchanan-Clarke, …
Paperback
(1)
Race Otherwise - Forging A New Humanism…
Zimitri Erasmus
Paperback
(3)
Spatial Network Big Databases - Queries…
Kwangsoo Yang, Shashi Shekhar
Hardcover
R2,879
Discovery Miles 28 790
Bioinformatics in Agriculture - Next…
Pradeep Sharma, Dinesh Yadav, …
Paperback
R3,038
Discovery Miles 30 380
GPS and GNSS Technology in Geosciences
George P. Petropoulos, Prashant K Srivastava
Paperback
R3,372
Discovery Miles 33 720
|