Social relations in our globalising world are increasingly stretched out across the borders of two or more nation-states. Yet, despite the growing academic interest in transnational economic networks, political movements and cultural forms, too little attention has been paid to the transformations of space that these processes both reflect and reproduce. Transnational Spaces takes a innovative perspective, looking at transnationalism as a social space that can be occupied by a wide range of actors, not all of whom are themselves directly connected to transnational migrant communities.

Associating social justice with landscape is not new, yet the twenty-first century's heightened threats to landscape and their impact on both human and, more generally, nature's habitats necessitate novel intellectual tools to address such challenges. This book offers that innovative critical thinking framework. The establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, in the aftermath of Second World War atrocities, was an aspiration to guarantee both concrete necessities for survival and the spiritual/emotional/psychological needs that are quintessential to the human experience. While landscape is place, nature and culture specific, the idea transcends nation-state boundaries and as such can be understood as a universal theoretical concept similar to the way in which human rights are perceived. The first step towards the intellectual interface between landscape and human rights is a dynamic and layered understanding of landscape. Accordingly, the 'Right to Landscape' is conceived as the place where the expansive definition of landscape, with its tangible and intangible dimensions, overlaps with the rights that support both life and human dignity, as defined by the UDHR. By expanding on the concept of human rights in the context of landscape this book presents a new model for addressing human rights - alternative scenarios for constructing conflict-reduced approaches to landscape-use and human welfare are generated. This book introduces a rich new discourse on landscape and human rights, serving as a platform to inspire a diversity of ideas and conceptual interpretations. The case studies discussed are wide in their geographical distribution and interdisciplinary in the theoretical situation of their authors, breaking fresh ground for an emerging critical dialogue on the convergence of landscape and human rights.

In "The Coming Famine", Julian Cribb lays out a vivid picture of impending planetary crisis - a global food shortage that threatens to hit by mid-century - that would dwarf any in our previous experience. Cribb's comprehensive assessment describes a dangerous confluence of shortages - of water, land, energy, technology, and knowledge - combined with the increased demand created by population and economic growth. Writing in brisk, accessible prose, Cribb explains how the food system interacts with the environment and with armed conflict, poverty, and other societal factors. He shows how high food prices and regional shortages are already sending shockwaves into the international community. But, far from outlining a doomsday scenario, "The Coming Famine" offers a strong and positive call to action, exploring the greatest issue of our age and providing practical suggestions for addressing each of the major challenges it raises.

In the mid 1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms.
Now, twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links the Dust Bowl to current political, economic and ecological issues--including the American livestock industry's exploitation of the Great Plains, and the on-going problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on the state of the plains today and the threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as "the Buffalo Commons," where deer, antelope, bison and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after the natural prairies that once existed.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are essential to ensure a sustainable society and healthy ecosystem over the coming decades. However, the systems to be managed are both broad and complex, requiring an integrated understanding of both bio-physical systems, such as soils and water, and economic and social systems, such as urban development and human behaviour. This edited book joins these domains of knowledge together from an applied perspective and considers how computer science can help. It takes a strategic look at the benefits and barriers to using modelling within environmental management and planning practice. It delves further by providing an in-depth comparative review of a wide range of models from a variety of scientific disciplines of interest with examples of their use for NBS. As such, this illustrated guide is designed to help students, researchers and practitioners navigate the huge range of modelling options available and develop the common understanding to work inter-disciplinarily.

Cities are playing an ever more important role in the mitigation and adaption to climate change. This book examines the politics shaping whether, how and to what extent cities engage in global climate governance. By studying the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, and drawing on scholarship from international relations, social movements, global governance and field theory, the book introduces a theory of global urban governance fields. This theory links observed increases in city engagement and coordination to the convergence of C40 cities around particular ways of understanding and enforcing climate governance. The collective capacity of cities to produce effective and socially equitable global climate governance is also analysed. Highlighting the constraints facing city networks and the potential pitfalls associated with a city-driven global response, this assessment of the transformative potential of cities will be of great interest to researchers, graduate students and policymakers in global environmental politics and policy.

A collection of essays on the ecology, biodiversity, and restoration of the Texas Hill Country. For most of five decades, evolutionary biologist David Hillis has studied the biodiversity of the Texas Hill Country. Since the 1990s, he has worked to restore the natural beauty and diversity of his Mason County ranch, the Double Helix. In his excursions around his ranch and across the Edwards Plateau, Hillis came to realize how little most people know about the plants and animals around them or their importance to our everyday lives. He began thinking about how natural history is connected to our enjoyment of life, especially in a place as beautiful and beloved as the Hill Country, which, not coincidentally, happens to be one of the most biodiverse parts of Texas. Featuring short nontechnical essays accompanied by vivid color photos, Armadillos to Ziziphus is a charming and casual introduction to the environment of the region. Whether walking the pasture with his Longhorn cattle, explaining the ecological significance of microscopic organisms in springtime mud puddles, or marveling at the local Ziziphus (aka Lotebush, a spiny shrub), Hillis guides first-time visitors and long-term residents alike in an appreciation for the Hill Country’s natural beauty and diversity.

Against Sustainability responds to the twenty-first-century environmental crisis by unearthing the nineteenth-century U.S. literary, cultural, and scientific contexts that gave rise to sustainability, recycling, and preservation. Through novel pairings of antebellum and contemporary writers including Walt Whitman and Lucille Clifton, George Catlin and Louise Erdrich, and Herman Melville and A. S. Byatt, the book demonstrates that some of our most vaunted strategies to address ecological crisis in fact perpetuate environmental degradation. Yet Michelle C. Neely also reveals that the nineteenth century offers useful and generative environmentalisms, if only we know where and how to find them. Henry David Thoreau and Emily Dickinson experimented with models of joyful, anti-consumerist frugality. Hannah Crafts and Harriet Wilson devised forms of radical pet-keeping that model more just ways of living with others. Ultimately, the book explores forms of utopianism that might more reliably guide mainstream environmental culture toward transformative forms of ecological and social justice. Through new readings of familiar texts, Against Sustainability demonstrates how nineteenth-century U.S. literature can help us rethink our environmental paradigms in order to imagine more just and environmentally sound futures.

This third edition has been comprehensively updated to reflect the large changes in scientific knowledge and policy debates on climate change since the previous edition in 2009. It provides a concise but thorough overview of the science, technology, economics, policy, and politics of climate change in a single volume. It explains how scientific and policy debates work, outlines the scientific evidence for the reality and seriousness of climate change and the basic atmospheric science that supports it, and discusses policy options and the current state of the policy debate. By pulling these elements together, the book explains why the issue can be so confusing and provides guidance on practical routes forward. Anyone interested in climate change, the global environment, or how science is used in policy debates should read this book. It is the ideal textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses in environmental policy and climate change.

'Read this book, think and then act - it's our only hope.' Chris Packham, MCS Ocean Ambassador Thank you for choosing this book - it shows that you care about the future of our planet. Whether you decide to go plastic free for an hour, a day or a year, this book will equip you with little steps we can each take to make a big difference. Let's turn the tide on plastic now - our oceans will thank you for it. Choking. Starving. Poisoning. This is what plastic litter is doing to marine life. Our oceans are, quite simply, facing environmental disaster. Yet by taking some simple steps and making a few changes to your daily routine, you can help to change this. How to Live Plastic Free will teach you everything you need to know about reducing your plastic usage on a daily basis. The chapters start with a typical morning routine and take you through your day, giving you tips and practical advice for removing unnecessary plastic at every possible opportunity. From the moment you wake up to the time you go to bed, you will learn how easy it can be to use plastic-free cosmetics, how to have plastic-free mealtimes, how to change your shopping habits and how to consider your use of plastic items at work. These simple, practical methods will show that small changes to your lifestyle can make a huge change to the future of our planet.

The Value of Ecocriticism offers a brief, incisive overview of the fast-changing field of environmental literary criticism in a bewildering age of global environmental threat. The intellectual, moral and political complexity of environmental issues, especially at the global scale (the so-called 'Anthropocene') forms a new challenge of inventiveness for both literature and criticism. Ecocriticism has been going through a period of radical change and has become a diverse and huge field on the exciting but unstable boundary between the humanities and the sciences, with a mix of cultural, political, scientific and activist strands. Its mantra is that the environmental crisis demands a reconsideration of society's basic values, constitution and purposes, and that art and literature can be vital in that work. As a leading figure in this field, Timothy Clark surveys recent developments in ecocriticism lucidly, but also sometimes critically. This book examines ecopoetics, material ecocriticism, and the ideas of world literature as well as contentious claims that we are living in a new geological epoch.

Rethinking the Human Place in Nature

A controversial, timely reassessment of the environmentalist agenda by outstanding historians, scientists, and critics.

In a lead essay that powerfully states the broad argument of the book, William Cronon writes that the environmentalist goal of wilderness preservation is conceptually and politically wrongheaded. Among the ironies and entanglements resulting from this goal are the sale of nature in our malls through the Nature Company, and the disputes between working people and environmentalists over spotted owls and other objects of species preservation.

The problem is that we haven't learned to live responsibly in nature. The environmentalist aim of legislating humans out of the wilderness is no solution. People, Cronon argues, are inextricably tied to nature, whether they live in cities or countryside. Rather than attempt to exclude humans, environmental advocates should help us learn to live in some sustainable relationship with nature. It is our home.

"An intellectually pathbreaking book."--Daniel J. Kevles

"The best kind of book, one that shocks the reader into entirely fresh ways of thinking."--Michael Pollan

William Cronon is Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Metro Vancouver is a diverse city where half the residents identify as people of colour, but only one percent of the population is racialized as Black. In this context, African-Canadians are both hyper-visible as Black, and invisible as distinct communities. Informed by feminist and critical race theories, and based on interviews with women and men who grew up in Vancouver, "Where Are You From?" recounts the unique experience of growing up in a place where the second generation seldom sees other people who look like them, and yet are inundated with popular representations of Blackness from the United States. This study explores how the second generation in Vancouver redefine their African identities to distinguish themselves from African-Americans, while continuing to experience considerable everyday racism that challenges belonging as Canadians. As a result, some members of the second generation reject, and others strongly assert, a Canadian identity.

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.

Introducing Human Geographies is a comprehensive, stimulating and innovative introduction to human geography. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to build upon the success of the acclaimed first edition. Now in full colour and with sixteen new chapters, discussion points and glossary definitions in the margin, it is even more accessible. Part one discusses the principal ideas through which human geographers understand and shape their subject. Part two examines each of the main sub-fields: A*cultural geography A*development geography A*economic geography A*environmental geography A*historical geography A*political geography A*rural geography A*social geography A*urban geography. Part three demonstrates how different thematic interests are combined in cutting-edge human geographical debates. Introducing Human Geographies continues to be the essential textbook for first year undergraduate geography students taking introductory courses in human geography.

Humans and human mobility, including driving and flying, are entangled with the climate emergency. Fossil-fuelled mobility worsens severe weather, and in turn, severe weather disrupts human mobility. A shift to zero-emission vehicles is critical but insufficient to repair the damage or prepare communities for the coming disruptions severe weather will bring. In Under the Weather Stephanie Sodero explores the intersection between human mobility and severe weather. Anchored in two Atlantic Canadian hurricane case studies, Hurricane Juan in Mi'kma'ki/Nova Scotia in 2003 and Hurricane Igor in Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland in 2010, the book contributes to contemporary cultural and policy discussions by offering five practical recommendations - revolutionize mobility, prioritize vital mobility of medical goods and services, embrace ecological mobilities, rebrand redundancy, and think flexibly - for how mobility can be reimagined to work with, rather than against, the climate in ways that also benefit the health, education, and economy of local communities. This ecological approach to mobilities sheds light on extreme mobility dependency and the impact of mobility disruptions on the ground in Canadian communities. Focusing on the entangled relationship between human mobility and the climate, Under the Weather examines how communities can transform their relationship with mobility to enable greater resilience.

Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University. In the late nineteenth century, at a time when Americans were becoming more removed from nature than ever before, U.S. soldiers were uniquely positioned to understand and construct nature's ongoing significance for their work and for the nation as a whole. American ideas and debates about nature evolved alongside discussions about the meaning of frontiers, about what kind of empire the United States should have, and about what it meant to be modern or to make "progress." Soldiers stationed in the field were at the center of these debates, and military action in the expanding empire brought new environments into play. In Taking the Field Amy Kohout draws on the experiences of U.S. soldiers in both the Indian Wars and the Philippine-American War to explore the interconnected ideas about nature and empire circulating at the time. By tracking the variety of ways American soldiers interacted with the natural world, Kohout argues that soldiers, through their words and their work, shaped Progressive Era ideas about both American and Philippine environments. Studying soldiers on multiple frontiers allows Kohout to inject a transnational perspective into the environmental history of the Progressive Era, and an environmental perspective into the period's transnational history. Kohout shows us how soldiers-through their writing, their labor, and all that they collected-played a critical role in shaping American ideas about both nature and empire, ideas that persist to the present.

As the inevitable, unsustainable nature of contemporary society becomes increasingly more obvious, it is important for scholars and activists to engage with the question, "what is to be done?" A Historical Scholarly Collection of Writings on the Earth Liberation Front provides an analysis and overview of an under-discussed but important part of the radical environmental movement, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which actively tried to stop ecocide. Through engagement with the activism and thought behind the ELF, volume contributors encourage readers to begin questioning the nature of contemporary capitalism, the state, and militarism. This book also explores the social movement and tactical impact of the ELF as well as governmental response to its activism, in order to strengthen analytic understanding of effectiveness, resistance, and community resilience. A Historical Scholarly Collection of Writings on the Earth Liberation Front is sure to inspire more scholarly work around social change, eco-terrorism, environmental studies, and environmental justice. This book is a valuable text for criminologists, sociologists, environmental advocates, politicians, political scientists, activists, community organizers, and religious leaders.

Ranging across philosophy, theology, ecology, psychology, and art, in Dump Philosophy Michael Marder argues that the earth, along with everything that lives and thinks on it, is at an advanced stage of being converted into a dump for industrial output and its by-products feeding consumerism and its excesses. Every day, scientific studies, media reports, and first-hand accounts of the rapidly deteriorating state of the environment hit us with a growing and disconcerting force. Trends such as microplastics in water, airborne toxins, topsoil degradation, and dangerous levels of carbon dioxide have upset the delicate ecological balance that has until now been sustaining life on the planet. Marder's original treatise paints a portrait of the Anthropocene as a global dump which wreaks havoc, causing disease and degrading our sensation, perception, and thinking, so that nuance is lost and ideas are reduced to soundbites in chains of free association. Describing the dump's fundamental characteristics and its effects on the body and the mind, he contemplates wider physiological, social, economic, and environmental metabolisms in the age of dumping, as well as the role of philosophy caught in its crosshairs. While surveying the devastation that is the reality of the twenty-first century, the book provides a frightening and yet intellectually spellbinding glimpse of the future.

Studies warn that global warming and sea level rise will create hundreds of millions of environmental refugees. While climate change will undoubtedly affect future migration patterns and behavior, the potential outcomes are more complex than the environmental refugee scenario suggests. This book provides a comprehensive review of how physical and human processes interact to shape migration, using simple diagrams and models to guide the researcher, policy maker and advanced student through the climate-migration process. The book applies standard concepts and theories used in climate and migration scholarship to explain how events such as Hurricane Katrina, the Dust Bowl, African droughts, and floods in Bangladesh and China have triggered migrations that haven't always fit the environmental refugee storyline. Lessons from past migrations are used to predict how future migration patterns will unfold in the face of sea level rise, food insecurity, political instability, and to review options for policy makers.

Environmental Histories of the Cold War explores the links between the Cold War and the global environment, ranging from the environmental impacts of nuclear weapons to the political repercussions of environmentalism. Environmental change accelerated sharply during the Cold War years, and so did environmentalism as both a popular movement and a scientific preoccupation. Most Cold War history entirely overlooks this rise of environmentalism and the crescendo of environmental change. These historical subjects were not only simultaneous but also linked together in ways both straightforward and surprising. The contributors to this book present these connected issues as a global phenomenon, with chapters concerning China, the USSR, Europe, North America, Oceania, and elsewhere. The role of experts as agents and advocates of using the environment as a weapon in the Cold War or, contrastingly, of preventing environmental damage resulting from Cold War politics is also given broad attention.

The water-which comes naturally from the earth and sky, the priceless compound of elements that forms and supports life-is dying. Warned in a vision, the tribal elder of the pueblo sends his chosen one to discover the fate of the precious life source. That man is Anglo, formerly known as Winn Conover, a white man who shares the work and vision of the tribe. Anglo must discover the true spiritual nature of the water in order to save it from encroaching land developers.

The fourth book in Joynes' Booker series about a white man's continuing search for meaning amid the indigenous peoples of the American Southwest, Dead Water Rites is lucid and literary, an articulate and artful plea to cease our self-destructive exploitation of the environment and native peoples.

Written by acknowledged experts in different fields - archaeology, history, and geography - in accessible form, this is an account of the evolution of human settlement in Britain over the last half-million years and its impact on the landscape from the beginnings to the present day. It reviews the way in which, over the centuries, the evolving human presence in Britain has shaped the British landscape and how, in turn, the British landscape has moulded the development of British communities.

This lively text by leading medical anthropologist Elisa J. Sobo offers a unique, holistic approach to human diversity and rises to the challenge of truly integrating biology and culture. The inviting writing style and fascinating examples make important ideas from complexity theory and epigenetics accessible to students. In this second edition, the material has been updated to reflect changes in both the scientific and socio-cultural landscape, for example in relation to topics such as the microbiome and transgender. Readers learn to conceptualize human biology and culture concurrently-as an adaptive biocultural capacity that has helped to produce the rich range of human diversity seen today. With clearly structured topics, an extensive glossary and suggestions for further reading, this text makes a complex, interdisciplinary topic a joy to teach. Instructor resources include an extensive test bank and a study guide.