In their latest book, Edmund O'Sullivan and Marilyn Taylor highlight the pedagogical practices that foster transformation from our current way of thinking about our place in the world to an underlying ecological way of seeing and acting. Learning Towards Ecological Consciousness offers the reader a selection of transformative practices that demonstrate, in specific contexts, the complex journey and contextual conditions that move us forward towards a deeper realization that we are part of the world around us, holding a greater promise for deeper ecological awareness. To this end, thirteen chapters offer a rich array of practices in diverse life settings--educational environments, communities and workplaces and personal relationships. Contributors and their material represent a range of cultures, work setting and professions. The aspect of O'Sullivan and Taylor's new book that distinguishes it from other books in the field is its exploration of how consciousness can be transformed through practices, experience and action.

Everyday exposures to common chemicals found in homes, schools, and workplaces have devastating long-term and inter-generational consequences on human health. At the same time, the risks associated with these exposures (and the burdens of managing them) rest disproportionately on the shoulders of women. Written by leading researchers in science, law, and public policy, the chapters in Our Chemical Selves critically examine the system that manufactures the chemicals as well as the social, political, and gender relations that enable harmful chemicals to continue being produced and consumed. This book demonstrates the urgent need to revise existing approaches to the regulation of toxic substances in Canada.

For the first time in history, humans have exceeded the sustaining capacity of Earth's global ecosystems. Our expanding footprint has tremendous momentum, and the insidious explosion of human impact creates a shockwave that threatens ecosystems worldwide for decades-possibly centuries.

Walter K. Dodds depicts in clear, nontechnical terms the root causes and global environmental effects of human behavior. He describes trends in population growth, resource use, and global environmental impacts of the past two centuries, such as greenhouse effects, ozone depletion, water pollution, and species extinctions and introductions. Dodds also addresses less familiar developments, such as the spread of antibiotic resistant genes in bacteria and the concentration of pesticides in the Arctic and other remote ecosystems. He identifies fundamental human activities that have irreversible effects on the environment and draws on recent social science and game theory results to explain why people use more than their share. Past behavior indicates that as resources grow scarce, humans will escalate their use of what remains instead of managing their consumption. "Humanity's Footprint" paints a lively but ultimately sobering picture of our environmental predicament. Dodds calls for a consilient approach to socioenvironmental restoration that draws on new thinking from across disciplines to develop sustainable solutions to global environmental problems.

How did the Seregenti become an internationally renowned African conservation site and one of the most iconic destinations for a safari? In this book, Thomas M. Lekan illuminates the controversial origins of this national park by examining how Europe's greatest wildlife conservationist, former Frankfurt Zoo director and Oscar-winning documentarian Bernhard Grzimek, popularized it as a global destination. In the 1950s, Grimzek and his son Michael began a quest to save the Serengeti from modernization and "overpopulation" by remaking an imperial game reserve into a gigantic zoo for the earth's last great mammals. Grzimek, well-known to German audiences through his long-running television program, A Place for Animals, used the film Seregenti Shall Not Die to convince ordinary Europeans that they could save nature. Yet their message sidestepped the uncomfortable legacies of German colonial exploitation in the region that had endangered animals and excluded local people. After independence, Grzimek raised funds, brokered diplomatic favors, and convinced German tourists to book travel packages-all to persuade Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere that wildlife would fuel the young nation's economic development. Grzimek helped Tanzania to create almost a dozen new national parks by 1975, but wooing tourists conflicted with rights of the Maasai and other African communities to inhabit the landscape on their own terms. Grzimek's global priorities eventually clashed with Nyerere's nationalist ones, as a more self-assertive Tanzania resented conservationists' meddling and failed promises. A story that demonstrates the conflicts between international conservation, nature tourism, decolonization, and national sovereignty, Our Gigantic Zoo explores the legacy of the man who portrayed himself as a second Noah, called on a sacred mission to protect the last vestiges of paradise for all humankind.

* Major disasters increased over 93 per cent during the 1990s, reaching 712 in 2001 * Up to 340 million people are affected by disasters every year* 'Vulnerability' is the key to understanding the causes, impacts and ways to mitigate disasters In this penetrating analysis, the authors critically examine "vulnerability" as a concept that is vital to the way we understand the impact and magnitude of disasters. This book is a counterbalance to technocratic approaches that limit themselves to simply looking at natural phenomena. Through the notion of vulnerability, the authors stress the importance of social processes and human-environmental interactions as causal agents in the making of disasters. They critically examine what renders communities unsafe, a condition they argue that depends primarily on the relative position of advantage or disadvantage that a particular group occupies within a society's social order. Bolstering their theoretical analysis with case studies drawn from Asia, Africa and Latin America, the authors also look at vulnerability in terms of its relationship to development and through its impact on policy and peoples' lives.

Environmental Anthropology: A Reader is a collection of historically significant readings, dating from early in the twentieth century up to the present, on the cross-cultural study of relations between people and their environment.* Provides the historical perspective that is typically missing from recent work in environmental anthropology* Includes an extensive intellectual history and commentary by the volume's editors* Offers a unique perspective on current interest in cross-cultural environmental relations* Divided into five thematic sections: (1) the nature/culture divide; (2) relationship between environment and social organization; (3) methodological debates and innovations; (4) politics and practice; and (5) epistemological issues of environmental anthropology* Organized into a series of paired papers, which 'speak' to each other, designed to encourage readers to make connections that they might not customarily make

Hailed as "a myth-destroying blockbuster book" by Ralph Nader, After the Sands outlines a vision and road map to transition Canada to a low-carbon society: a plan lacking within all of Canada's major political parties. Despite its oil abundance, Canada is woefully unprepared for the next global oil supply crisis. Canada imports 40 percent of its oil, yet unlike twenty-six of the other twenty-eight international energy agency members has no strategic petroleum reserves to meet temporary shortages. Canadians use 27 to 39 percent more oil per capita than other sparsely populated, northern countries like Norway, Finland and Sweden. After the Sands sets out a bold strategy using deep conservation and a Canada-first perspective. The goal: to end oil and natural gas exports and ensure that all Canadians get sufficient energy at affordable prices in a carbon-constrained future.

Michael P Hassell examines the population dynamics of the interaction between insect parasitoids and their hosts. He incorporates all the major recent advances in our understanding of these interactions to show how the resulting body of theory makes direct contact with systems in the field, and can provide us with an in-depth understanding of a whole area of population dynamics. Hassell gives us a new and authoritative synthesis of his subject, as well as an elegant and exciting demonstration of how ecological studies advance.

Scientists and policymakers are beginning to understand in ever-increasing detail that environmental problems cannot be understood solely through the biophysical sciences. Environmental issues are fundamentally human issues and must be set in the context of social, political, cultural, and economic knowledge. The need both to understand how human beings in the past responded to climatic and other environmental changes and to synthesize the implications of these historical patterns for present-day sustainability spurred a conference of the world's leading scholars on the topic. "The Way the Wind Blows" is the rich result of that conference.

Articles discuss the dynamics of climate, human perceptions of and responses to the environment, and issues of sustainability and resiliency. These themes are illustrated through discussions of human societies around the world and throughout history.

This book describes soft sediments in the sea and in estuaries as habitats for a wide range of animals and plants and techniques used to study them. Designed to be accessible to readers at all levels, it discusses organisms and their adaptations on sandy shores, mudflats, seagrass beds, salt marshes, mangrove swamps and below the tide marks. It emphasizes the special characteristics of estuaries, including life in the estuarine water column and estuarine food webs, and considers pollution problems and conservation approaches.

This book provides a standardized set of protocols for measuring soil properties, to facilitatte corss-site synthesis and evaluation of ecosystem processess. The book should be of interest to a rather broad range of ecologists, agronomists, and soil scientists. It is the second volume in the Long-term Ecological Research Network Series.

Ever since the emergence of human culture, people and animals have co-existed in close proximity. Humans have always recognized both their kinship with animals and their fundamental differences, as animals have always been a threat to humans' well-being. The relationship, therefore, has been complex, intimate, reciprocal, personal, and -- crucially -- ambivalent. It is hardly surprising that animals evoke strong emotions in humans, both positive and negative.
This companion volume to Morris' important earlier work, The Power of Animals, is a sustained investigation of the Malawi people's sacramental attitude to animals, particularly the role that animals play in life-cycle rituals, their relationship to the divinity and to spirits of the dead. How people relate to and use animals speaks volumes about their culture and beliefs. This book overturns the ingrained prejudice within much ethnographic work, which has often dismissed the pivotal role animals play in culture, and shows that personhood, religion, and a wide range of rituals are informed by, and even dependent upon, human-animal relations.

The Global Energy Assessment (GEA) brings together over 300 international researchers to provide an independent, scientifically based, integrated and policy-relevant analysis of current and emerging energy issues and options. It has been peer-reviewed anonymously by an additional 200 international experts. The GEA assesses the major global challenges for sustainable development and their linkages to energy; the technologies and resources available for providing energy services; future energy systems that address the major challenges; and the policies and other measures that are needed to realize transformational change toward sustainable energy futures. The GEA goes beyond existing studies on energy issues by presenting a comprehensive and integrated analysis of energy challenges, opportunities and strategies, for developing, industrialized and emerging economies. This volume is an invaluable resource for energy specialists and technologists in all sectors (academia, industry and government) as well as policymakers, development economists and practitioners in international organizations and national governments.

Behavioural ecologists study the strategies that individual animals use to maximize their genetic representation in future generations; conservation biologists study small populations and attempt to stem the tide of species extinctions. In the last few years, a handful of behavioural ecologists, increasingly concerned about species losses, have begun to address issues in conservation biology. Using data collected in the course of their fieldwork on mating systems, foraging behaviour, or habitat preferences, or simply by working on an endangered species, they have started to apply their findings to models of population growth and effective population size, hands-on management, and developing conservation strategies. This edited volume is the first attempt to link these disciplines formally.

In the last few years, a handful of behavioural ecologists, increasingly concerned about species losses, have begun to address issues in conservation biology. Using data collected in the course of their fieldwork on mating systems, foraging behaviour, or habitat preferences, or simply by working on an endangered species, they have started to apply their findings to models of population growth and effective population size, hands-on management, and developing conservation strategies. This edited volume is the first attempt to link these disciplines formally.

Extreme Environment promises to provoke fresh – and spirited – debate about the modern environmental movement and the many ways in which environmentalism, media, economics, public policy and the politics of liberty intersect.

In order to reduce poverty and continue to raise living standards, a sensible, balanced approach to a healthy, productive environment is required. No country, but especially not those in the developing world, can afford to be manipulated by the self-interested moralising and alarmism perpetrated by some special interest groups. Exaggeration by environmentalists, many journalists and even some scientists causes undue fear and anxiety among those who don’t already dismiss the green lobby for crying wolf. Worse, misinformation affects regulation and policymaking in ways that actively harm developing economies.

Starting with well-researched work questioning the claims of opponents to shale-gas drilling, or ‘fracking’, Ivo Vegter argues that public opinion and policy ought to be informed by accurate data and reasoned argument. Using a wide range of examples, from nuclear accidents and oil spills to food additives and agricultural chemicals, he demonstrates why we should be just as sceptical of the emotive rhetoric of environmentalists, which often turns out to be alarmist, or even false, as we are of corporate spin.

Globally relevant, but offering a unique perspective from a developing country – South Africa – this book is a must-read for every thinking person who cares about the world we live in.

Coastally Restricted Forests addresses the ecology and management of freshwater forests and wetlands located along sea coasts, assessing the current research, comparing data from different geographic regions, and integrating applications and ideas from foresters, land-use managers, and water resource managers. This book fills a gap in forestry and wetlands literature, as it takes a worldwide view of natural resource management.

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.

This book outlines four different categories of co-operation -- reciprocal altruism, kinship, group-selected co-operation, and by-product mutualism -- and ties them together in a single framework called the Co-operator's Dilemma. Hundreds of studies on cooperation in insects, fish, birds, and mammals are then reviewed, each example being tied back to the theoretical framework developed early on when the data allows. Future experiments designed to further elucidate a particular type of co-operation are provided throughout the book.

In pairs, male and female birds appear to work as a team, competing for food, defending nests, and protecting predators, but in fact, because each individual strives to maximize its own reproductive potential, conflicts can occur if one finds a better partner. So while some birds choose one mate for life, others have many partners. In this book, fourteen classic studies of bird behavior are brought together to compare the different partnership patterns from ecological and evolutionary perspectives. Particular attention is paid to the availability of mates, the selection process and the consequences of choosing one mate over another. By comparing between and within species, each chapter outlines the features that influence a pair's reproductive performance and how this interacts with ecological and environmental constraints. Introductory and concluding chapters review the latest thinking on this fascinating subject. The book is aimed at students and researchers in behavioral ecology but can also foster new insights for bird watchers and ornithologists.

This book is a personal history and apology, written by one of this century's most distinguished small mammal ecologists, for a life in science spent working on problems for which no final dramatic conclusion was reached. Included along the way are some important anedcotes and history about Charles Elton and the pioneering work at the Bureau of Animal Population at Oxford University, from which much of modern population ecology has grown, and insights on the philosophy and practice of science.

The Earth's human population is expected to pass eight billion by the year 2025, while rapid growth in the global economy will spur ever increasing demands for natural resources. The world will consequently face growing scarcities of such vital renewable resources as cropland, fresh water, and forests. Thomas Homer-Dixon argues in this sobering book that these environmental scarcities will have profound social consequences--contributing to insurrections, ethnic clashes, urban unrest, and other forms of civil violence, especially in the developing world.

Homer-Dixon synthesizes work from a wide range of international research projects to develop a detailed model of the sources of environmental scarcity. He refers to water shortages in China, population growth in sub-Saharan Africa, and land distribution in Mexico, for example, to show that scarcities stem from the degradation and depletion of renewable resources, the increased demand for these resources, and/or their unequal distribution. He shows that these scarcities can lead to deepened poverty, large-scale migrations, sharpened social cleavages, and weakened institutions. And he describes the kinds of violence that can result from these social effects, arguing that conflicts in Chiapas, Mexico and ongoing turmoil in many African and Asian countries, for instance, are already partly a consequence of scarcity.

Homer-Dixon is careful to point out that the effects of environmental scarcity are indirect and act in combination with other social, political, and economic stresses. He also acknowledges that human ingenuity can reduce the likelihood of conflict, particularly in countries with efficient markets, capable states, and an educated populace. But he argues that the violent consequences of scarcity should not be underestimated--especially when about half the world's population depends directly on local renewables for their day-to-day well-being. In the next decades, he writes, growing scarcities will affect billions of people with unprecedented severity and at an unparalleled scale and pace.

Clearly written and forcefully argued, this book will become the standard work on the complex relationship between environmental scarcities and human violence.

This book is a unique collection of evolutionary and ecological perspectives in the study of biodiversity by some of the leading researchers in the field. The seventeen chapters are divided into three sections, each section beginning with an overview of its contents. The book traces past landmarks, current questions, and future trends in biodiversity reseach ranging from the evaluation of the fossil record and molecular phylogenies in untangling the genesis of diversity; to population, community, and ecosystem-level approaches in understanding patterns of species persistence; and finally to large-scale diversity patterns and species conservation. Subject reviews, case-studies, and discussions of techniques are combined to produce a state-of-the-art book.

This book brings together the results from one of the most significant long-term studies of birds in the late twentieth century, testing our understanding of evolution in natural populations. Combining genetics, behaviour, ecology, and a landmark data set, it will be essential reading for everyone with an interest in evolutionary ecology. The Lesser Snow Goose is a migratory Arctic breeder which occurs in two genetically distinct forms. Most have white plumage, but some are dark, allowing rapid scoring and study of a highly visible heritable trait. Initial chapters describe the natural history, recent evolutionary history, and current patterns of gene flow in the species. A subsequent chapter presents a detailed demographic model integrating both fecundity and survival components of fitness, which is used as an analytical framework throughout later chapters. Two chapters detail the effects of annual and age-specific variation in fitness components. The authors then focus on the microevolutionary status of the population, using data gathered over 26 years on 40,000 individually marked adult geese, 45,000 nests, and 110,000 goslings at one colony in northern Manitoba. The heart of the book analyses the working of natural selection on plumage colour, seasonal timing of breeding, clutch size, egg size, and body size, using the components of fitness approach to quantifying selection in stages throughout the animal life cycle. The results are an important advance in understanding the evolutionary process in vertebrates.