Hundreds of millions of people live and work in forests across the world. One vital aspect of their lives, yet largely unexamined, is the challenge of protecting and enhancing the unique relationship between the health of forests and the health of people. This book, written for a broad audience, is the first comprehensive introduction to the issues surrounding the health of people living in and around forests, particularly in Asia, South America and Africa. Part one is a set of synthesis chapters, addressing policy, public health, environmental conservation and ecological perspectives on health and forests (including women and child health, medicinal plants and viral diseases such as Ebola, SARS and Nipah Encephalitis). Part two takes a multi-lens approach to lead the reader to a more concrete and holistic understanding. It features case studies from around the world that cover important issues such as the links between HIV/AIDS and the forest sector, and between diet and health. Part three looks at the specific challenges to health care delivery in forested areas, including remoteness and the integration of traditional medicine with modern health care. The generous use of boxes with specific examples adds layers of depth to the analyses. The book concludes with a synthesis designed for use by practitioners and policymakers to work with forest dwellers to improve their health and their ecosystems. This book is a vital addition to the knowledge base of all professionals, academics and students working on forests, natural resources management, health and development worldwide. Published with CIFOR and People and Plants International

The project examines how three prominent philosophers of education - William Torrey Harris, John Dewey, and Gregory Bateson - each developed a world view that provides a philosophical basis for environmental education.

This book introduces and studies a number of stochastic models of subsistence, communication, social evolution and political transition that will allow the reader to grasp the role of uncertainty as a fundamental property of our irreversible world. At the same time, it aims to bring about a more interdisciplinary and quantitative approach across very diverse fields of research in the humanities and social sciences. Through the examples treated in this work - including anthropology, demography, migration, geopolitics, management, and bioecology, among other things - evidence is gathered to show that volatile environments may change the rules of the evolutionary selection and dynamics of any social system, creating a situation of adaptive uncertainty, in particular, whenever the rate of change of the environment exceeds the rate of adaptation. Last but not least, it is hoped that this book will contribute to the understanding that inherent randomness can also be a great opportunity - for social systems and individuals alike - to help face the challenge of "survival under uncertainty".

In pursuing international order, prosperity and democracy, politics and political decision-making have contributed to global climate change issues. Solutions need to be found that go beyond finding cleaner, newer technologies, revised policies and laws to curb pollution and carbon production, protecting species and habitats, or remembering to turn off the lights and put out the recycling. They need to re-imagine how our rich and complex ways of life are interconnected with the natural environment. Edmondson and Levy set out to increase understanding of why it takes so long for governments and others to agree on how to respond to the challenges of global climate change, and why it is important for them to continue to try to do so. They examine why it is so difficult for the international community to respond to global climate change. In doing so, they analyse and explain some of the strategies that might ultimately provide the foundations for appropriate responses.

..". a remarkable study." . Steven Lukes Time, as we experience it, is a social and cultural phenomenon. The pioneering study of the social representation of time was by Henri Hubert (1872-1927). Hubert was a core member of the group who worked with Emile Durkheim and a close collaborator with Marcel Mauss. His essay on time is a good example of the group's originality and intellectually creative "collective ferment." This is its first English translation, and includes its review by Mauss."

This book assesses and illustrates innovative and practical world-wide measures for combating sea level rise from the profession of landscape architecture. The work explores how the appropriate mixture of integrated, multi-scalar flood protection mechanisms can reduce risks associated with flood events including sea level rise. Because sea level rise is a global issue, illustrative case studies performed from the United States, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Japan, China, and the Netherlands identify the structural (engineered), non-structural (nature-based), and hybrid mechanisms (mixed) used to combat sea level rise and increase flood resilience. The alternative flood risk reduction mechanisms are extracted and analyzed from each case study to develop and explain a set of design-based typologies to combat sea level rise which can then be applied to help proctor new and existing communities. It is important for those located within the current or future floodplain considering sea level rise and those responsible for land use, developmental, and population-related activities within these areas to strategically implement a series of integrated constructed and green infrastructure-based flood risk reduction mechanisms to adequately protect threatened areas. As a result, this book is beneficial to both academics and practitioners related to multiple design professions such as urban designers, urban planners, architects, real estate developers, and landscape architects.

At a time when it is clear that climate change adaptation and mitigation are failing, this book examines how our assumptions about (valid and usable) knowledge are preventing effective climate action. Through a cross-disciplinary, empirically-based analysis of climate science and policy, the book situates the failures of climate policy in the cultural history of prediction and its interfaces with policy. Fava calls into question the current interfaces between scientific research and climate policy by tracing multiple connections between modelling, epistemology, politics, food security, religion, art, and the apocalyptic. Demonstrating how the current domination of climate policy by models and scenarios is part of the problem, the book examines how artistic practices are a critical location to ask questions differently, rethink environmental futures, and activate social change. The analysis starts with another moment of climatic change in recent western history: the overlap of the Little Ice Age and the "scientific revolution," during which intense climatic, scientific and political change were contemporary with mathematical calculation of the apocalypse. Dealing with the need for complex answers to complex and urgent questions, this is essential reading for those interested in climate action, interdisciplinary research and methodological innovation. The empirical analyses amount to a methodological experiment, across history of science, theology, art theory and history, architecture, future studies, climatology, computer modelling, and agricultural policy. This book is a major contribution to understanding how we are precluding effective climate action, and designing futures that resemble our worst nightmares.

Kevin Wehr inquires into the relations between society & its natural environment by examining the historical discourse around several cases of state building in the American West - the construction of three high dams from 1928 to 1963.

Modern agriculture must seek to feed the world's growing population with little or no cost to the Environment. Modern agriculture is capable of producing greater yields than ever before, but intensification of agriculture does come at a price. This comprehensive volume examines the environmental impact made by agriculture in the 21st Century, looking forward to the future with the lessons of the past. Key chapters include impacts of agriculture upon soil quality, greenhouse gas budgets, water-borne pathogens, surface water chemistry, groundwater, agricultural pesticides and the environment, balancing the environmental consequences of agriculture with the needs for food security and positive and negative aspects of agricultural production of biofuels. A fundamental reference for advanced students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers working in the field or related areas.

This book examines the key technologies being deployed in an effort to tap the potential presented by world's deserts for siting large-scale solar power applications, and surveys the feasibility of such projects given the remoteness and the hostility of these environments. Focusing on large scale photovoltaics and concentrating solar thermal power, it explains how the systems work, projects that are being planned, the required scales, and the technical difficulties they need to overcome to function effectively. It then moves on to examine the economics of such projects (including financing) and the social and environmental effects they may have. Illustrated throughout by reference to built or planned projects, and written in a clear, jargon-free style, this is a must-read for anyone interested in the development of large scale solar applications.

The aim of the book is to analyse the factors that have influenced wind power outcomes in a range of countries which have featured significant wind power deployment programmes. A central theme is the relationship between patterns of ownership and the outcomes. These flow from different social environments, but they are associated with different types of planning outcome and deployment rates. Grass roots ownership is more widespread than is commonly thought, although it is not a panacea for effective wind power programmes. Financial policies used to promote wind power also have important influences of the rates of deployment. However, what seems to be most important for wind power deployment is a double coincidence of widespread social support for wind power deployment and effective financial support systems for wind power.

*'Probably the best novel I'll read this year. It's about work and love and characters who ring true. By the time I was 50 pages in I couldn't put it down. Can't stop thinking about it' Stephen King* For generations, Rich Gundersen's family has made a living felling giant redwoods on California's rugged coast. It's treacherous work, and though his son, Chub, wants nothing more than to step into his father's boots, Rich longs for a bigger future for him. Colleen just wants a brother or sister for Chub, but she's losing hope. There is so much that she and Rich don't talk about these days - including her suspicions that there is something very wrong at the heart of the forest on which their community is built. When Rich is offered the opportunity to buy a plot of timber which borders Damnation Grove, he leaps at the chance - without telling Colleen. Soon the Gundersens find themselves on opposite sides of a battle that threatens to rip their town apart. Can they find a way to emerge from this together?

Wild Otters answers the need for an up-to-date, scientifically-oriented introduction to the Lutra lutra species. Based in part on the author's extensive field observations, the book provides a superb basis for active conservation management of a species faced with an increasingly hostile environment. Topics include social organization and behavior, food and foraging strategies, ecological information on their main prey fish, problems of energetics and thermo-insulation, population structure, mortality and reproduction, and the impact of humans. Packed with illustrations and photographs, Wild Otters is perfect for students and researchers in ecology, conservation, zoology, and animal behavior.

Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, Shortlisted for the Stella Prize, Highly Commended in the Wainwright Prize for writing on global conservation, and a Sunday Independent Book of the Year. How do whales experience environmental change? Has our connection to these animals been transformed by technology? What future awaits us, and them? Fathoms blends natural history, philosophy, and science to explore these questions. Giggs introduces us to whales so rare they have never been named and tells us of whale 'pop' songs that sweep across hemispheres. She takes us into the deeps to discover that one whale's death can spark a great flourishing of creatures. We travel to Japan to board whaling ships, examine the uncanny charisma of these magnificent mammals, and confront the plastic pollution now pervading their underwater environment.

In Consuming Places John Urry draws together some of his most significant essays on the sociology of place. He interrogates the nature of time and space, the different ways in which places are economically and culturally transformed, the form taken by the visual consumption of place, and the ways in which travel transforms nature and the environment. Wide-ranging yet coherent, this much needed book is a major contribution to the sociology of place. It is likely to be debated for years to come.

eBook available with sample pages: PB:0415113113 EB:0203202929

Introduces students to current and emerging environmental hazards to human- and related ecosystem health. Explains detrimental policy changes to existing policies and recently developed policies that impact the health of the environment and that of communities. Presents a perspective for global sources of pollution and how actions have emerged for control of environmental hazards such as climate change and global air pollution. Includes foundation lectures, case studies, and practice questions to help create student led discussions for both in-class and homework assignments. Describes social justice issues and COVID-19 impacts in relation to environmental hazards.

The contemporary challenge of postmodernity draws our attention to the nature of reality and the ways in which experience is constructed.
Sensuous Geographies explores our immediate sensuous experience of the world. Touch, smell, hearing and sight - the four senses chiefly relevant to geographical experience - both receive and structure information. The process is mediated by historical, cultural and technological factors.
Issues of definition are illustrated through a variety of sensuous geographies. Focusing on postmodern concerns with representation, the book brings insights from individual perceptions and cultural observations to an analysis of the senses, challenging us to reconsider the role of the sensuous as not merely the physical basis of understanding but as an integral part of the cultural definition of geographical knowledge.

Sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China. A serious water pollution incident occurs once every two-to-three days. China's breakneck growth causes great concern about its global environmental impacts, as others look to China as a source for possible future solutions to climate change. But how are Chinese people really coming to grips with environmental problems? This book provides access to otherwise unknown stories of environmental activism and forms the first real-life account of China and its environmental tensions.
"China and the Environment" provides a unique report on the experiences of participatory politics that have emerged in response to environmental problems, rather than focusing only on macro-level ecological issues and their elite responses. Featuring previously untranslated short interviews, extracts from reports and other translated primary documents, the authors argue that going green in China isn't just about carbon targets and energy policy; China's grassroots green defenders are helping to change the country for the better.

A human rights-based agenda has received significant attention in writings on general development policy, but less so in forestry. Forests and People presents a comprehensive analysis of the rights-based agenda in forestry, connecting it with existing work on tenure reform, governance rights and cultural rights.

As the editors note in their introduction, the attention to rights in forestry differs from 'rights-based approaches' in international development and other natural resource fields in three critical ways. First, redistribution is a central demand of activists in forestry but not in other fields. Many forest rights activists call for not only the redirection of forest benefits but also the redistribution of forest tenure to redress historical inequalities. Second, the rights agenda in forestry emerges from numerous grassroots initiatives, setting forest-related human rights apart from approaches that derive legitimacy from transnational human rights norms and are driven by international and national organizations. Third, forest rights activists attend to individual as well as peoples' collective rights whereas approaches in other fields tend to emphasize one or the other set of rights.

Forests and People is a timely response to the challenges that remain for advocates as new trends and initiatives, such as market-based governance, REDD, and a rush to biofuels, can sometimes seem at odds with the gains from what has been a two decade expansion of forest peoples' rights. It explores the implications of these forces, and generates new insights on forest governance for scholars and provides strategic guidance for activists.

The modern world is, in the authors' view, undergoing the process of meltdown--global meltdown. Having argued in an earlier book that humankind is headed for an environmental catastrophe that will either eliminate the human species or greatly reduce our numbers, the authors now focus on the breakdown of organized social order that will occur when the ecological crisis happens. Believing that civilization as we know it will not last, even without a definitive environmental cataclysm, they explore here the social, political, and philosophical ramifications of this vision. After outlining the interaction of the forces of environmental destruction, economic rationalism, and technological revolution, this book shows their impact on social problems such as immigration, racial and ethnic conflict, and the loss of personal, spiritual, and religious meaning. In the first chapter, the authors consider the effects of these social conflicts in both the non-Western and the Western world, concluding that the global meltdown theory is supported by the worldwide rise of terrorism. Chapter 2 discusses the technological and ecological forces they believe will led to a "new world disorder." The work then goes on to use Australia as a case study illustrating the collision of population and environment. In the concluding chapter, the authors support their thesis further with a review of the literature on the subject.

We owe it to our fellow humans - and other species - to save them from the catastrophic harm caused by climate change. Philosopher Elizabeth Cripps approaches climate justice not just as an abstract idea but as something that should motivate us all. Using clear reasoning and poignant examples, starting from irrefutable science and uncontroversial moral rules, she explores our obligations to each other and to the non-human world, unravels the legacy of colonialism and entrenched racism, and makes the case for immediate action. The second half of the book looks at solutions. Who should pay the bill for climate action? Who must have a say? How can we hold multinational companies, organisations - even nations - to account? Cripps argues powerfully that climate justice goes beyond political polarization. Climate activism is a moral duty, not a political choice.

The challenge presented by climate change is by its nature, global. The populations of the Mexican Caribbean, the focus of this book, are faced by everyday decisions not unlike those in the urban North. The difference is that for the people of the Mexican Caribbean, evidence of the effects of climate change, including hurricanes, is very familiar to them. This important study documents the choices and risks of people who are powerless to change the economic development model which is itself forcing climate change. The book examines the Mexican Caribbean coast and explores the wider issues of managing climate change in vulnerable areas of the tropics. It also points to the inability to integrate development thinking into climate change adaptation. The authors suggest that failures in local governance - the transparency of state actions, and the local populations lack of effective power - represents a greater threat to adaptation than the absence of technical capacity in vulnerable areas. Using local case studies of communities, fishing villages and tourist destinations, this well-researched book will appeal to international students and academics working on climate change and professionals in development, conservation and tourism industries. Contents: 1. Introduction; 2. The Dynamics of Coastal Urbanisation; 3. Nature and Space in the 'Discovery' of the Mexican Caribbean; 4. The Development of Mass Tourism in Mexico; 5. Human Security and Governance; 6. Governance as Process: the Evolution of 'Power Spheres' and Climate Change; 7. Lived Experiences on the Coast: Holbox and Mahahual; 8. Conclusion

Debated, denied, unheard of, encompassing: The Anthropocene is a vexed topic, and requires interdisciplinary imagination. Starting at the author's home in rural northern Michigan and zooming out to perceive a dizzying global matrix, Christopher Schaberg invites readers on an atmospheric, impressionistic adventure with the environmental humanities. Searching for the Anthropocene blends personal narrative, cultural criticism, and ecological thought to ponder human-driven catastrophe on a planetary scale. This book is not about defining or settling the Anthropocene, but rather about articulating what it's like to live in the Anthropocene, to live with a sense of its nagging presence--even as the stakes grow higher with each passing year, each oncoming storm.

Although climate change affects everybody it is not gender neutral. It has significant social impacts and magnifies existing inequalities such as the disparity between women and men in their vulnerability and ability to cope with this global phenomenon. This new textbook, edited by one of the authors of the seminal Women and the Environment in the Third World: Alliance for the Future (1988) which first exposed the links between environmental degradation and unequal impacts on women, provides a comprehensive introduction to gender aspects of climate change. Over 35 authors have contributed to the book. It starts with a short history of the thinking and practice around gender and sustainable development over the past decades. Next it provides a theoretical framework for analyzing climate change manifestations and policies from the perspective of gender and human security. Drawing on new research, the actual and potential effects of climate change on gender equality and women's vulnerabilities are examined, both in rural and urban contexts. This is illustrated with a rich range of case studies from all over the world and valuable lessons are drawn from these real experiences. Too often women are primarily seen as victims of climate change, and their positive roles as agents of change and contributors to livelihood strategies are neglected. The book disputes this characterization and provides many examples of how women around the world organize and build resilience and adapt to climate change and the role they are playing in climate change mitigation. The final section looks at how far gender mainstreaming in climate mitigation and adaptation has advanced, the policy frameworks in place and how we can move from policy to effective action. Accompanied by a wide range of references and key resources, this book provides students and professionals with an essential, comprehensive introduction to the gender aspects of climate change.

Alongside climate change and inequality one of the biggest challenges facing the world today paradoxically arises from one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century. For the first time in human history, thanks to advances in medical science and public health, the majority of people will live into their 70s and 80s and there are more people alive aged over 60 than under 5. Rather than celebrating this extraordinary achievement, however, we see an ageing society as a threat, we worry about a growing care burden and the challenges of financing these longer lives, we fear a shrinking economy and a society riven by intergenerational conflict. These concerns are all entirely legitimate if we don't make urgent and major reforms to every aspect of society and the economy. Evergreen provides a roadmap for these changes. It argues that we have the potential to tackle these issues to create a healthier, happier and more productive society in the future. In part 1, Scott outlines the health and demographic trends which have brought us to this point, establishes the key myths and misunderstandings which have clouded our approach so far, and identifies the key issues which need to be addressed. Part 2 outlines the longevity agenda and focuses on the science of living longer and healthier and the transformations needed for our health systems, economy and personal finances to be able to sustain these changes. The final part looks at the social, political and philosophical issues around delivering an evergreen society.