The Emergence of Ecological Modernisation offers a wealth of empirical research material from an international perspective, bringing together previously scattered sources for the first time. It addresses a series of theoretical issues that are of key contemporary relevance, such as the relationship between ecological modernisation and sustainable development; strategies for promoting ecological modernisation, and the extent to which it is possible to 'green' contemporary capitalism.

This impressive collection of original essays explores the relationship between social conflict and the environment - a topic that has received little attention within criminology. The chapters provide a systematic and comprehensive introduction and overview of conflict situations stemming from human exploitation of environments, as well as the impact of social conflicts on the wellbeing and health of specific species and ecosystems. Largely informed by green criminology perspectives, the chapters in the book are intended to stimulate new understandings of the relationships between humans and nature through critical evaluation of environmental destruction and degradation associated with social conflicts occurring around the world. With a goal of creating a typology of environment-social conflict relationships useful for green criminological research, this study is essential reading for scholars and academics in criminology, as well as those interested in crime, law and justice.

Reading this book is your first step to becoming a competent human geography researcher. Whether you are a novice needing practical help for your first piece of research or a professional in search of an accessible guide to best practice, Conducting Research in Human Geography is a unique and indispensable book to have at hand. The book provides a broad overview of theoretical underpinnings in contemporary human geography and links these with the main research methodologies currently being used. It is designed to guide the user through the complete research process, whether it be a one day field study or a large project, from the nurturing of ideas and development of a proposal, to the design of an enquiry, the generation and analysis of data, to the drawing of conclusions and the presentation of findings.

Although the impacts of climate change are certainly global, its manifestations and subsequent consequences begin locally. Local Climate Change and Society examines how climate change has altered society's relationship with the environment and particularly local communities to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The book analyses the principles, practices and local responses to micro-level climate policies and interrogates the increasing role of local governments and local climate social movements induced by transnational corporations' activities both above and below the equator. This book contains country and cross-country case studies and inter-disciplinary contributions written by academics, researchers and policy makers at the cutting edge of climate change knowledge. It aimed at students of environmental and climate change in the social sciences, academics, climate change public. Local climate change and society has direct appeal to professional staff concerned with environmental management, and policy makers supporting communities and municipalities in climate change adaptation and mitigation processes and activities at the at local level.

The beauty of the Hudson River Valley was a legendary subject for artists during the nineteenth century. They portrayed its bucolic settings and humans in harmony with nature as the physical manifestation of God's work on earth. More than a hundred years later, those sentiments would be tested as never before.
In the fall of 1962, Consolidated Edison of New York, the nation's largest utility company, announced plans for the construction of a pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant at Storm King Mountain on the Hudson River, forty miles north of New York City. Over the next eighteen years, their struggle against environmentalists would culminate in the abandonment of the project.
Robert D. Lifset offers an original case history of this monumental event in environmental history, when a small group of concerned local residents initiated a landmark case of ecology versus energy production. He follows the progress of this struggle, as Con Ed won approvals and permits early on, but later lost ground to environmentalists who were able to raise questions about the potential damage to the habitat of Hudson River striped bass.
Lifset uses the struggle over Storm King to examine how environmentalism changed during the 1960s and 1970s. He also views the financial challenges and increasingly frequent blackouts faced by Con Ed, along with the pressure to produce ever-larger quantities of energy.
As Lifset demonstrates, the environmental cause was greatly empowered by the fact that through this struggle, for the first time, environmentalists were able to gain access to the federal courts. The environmental cause was also greatly advanced by adopting scientific evidence of ecological change, combined with mounting public awareness of the environmental consequences of energy production and consumption. These became major factors supporting the case against Con Ed, spawning a range of new local, regional, and national environmental organizations and bequeathing to the Hudson River Valley a vigilant and intense environmental awareness. A new balance of power emerged, and energy companies would now be held to higher standards that protected the environment.

While it is widely recognized that climate change will have significant impacts on the developing world, the social dimensions of vulnerability are often ignored in development projects and practices aimed at promoting adaptation to climate change. This book presents case studies that shed light on the tendency to promote policies and practices that fit conveniently into traditional development paradigms, and explores how development may need to shift focus in relation to climate change adaptation. The chapters offer critical perspectives that challenge many mainstream views on vulnerability, adaptive capacity, resilience, and the role of development projects in the context of climate change. The international case studies illustrate how responses to climate change that are embedded in traditional approaches to development may actually exacerbate vulnerability instead of reducing it. Adaptation projects often focus on dealing with the physical impacts of climate change (increased water scarcity, flooding, heat stress, etc.) through technical interventions, investments in infrastructure, and disaster preparedness, while they rarely call into question the underlying systems and structures that have contributed to the social and economic inequalities (inadequate access to resources, forced displacement, etc). This book presents adaptation as more than isolated decisions, actions, policies or practices aimed at addressing specific changes in the climate, but rather as a collection of on-going processes shaped by social, economic, political, institutional, and cultural dynamics. The book illustrates how approaching adaptation through 'development as usual' is unlikely to promote, maintain or enhance the well-being of populations faced with the complex challenges posed by climate change. Individual, household, community, sectoral and national decisions are seldom solely about climate change, and adaptation strategies may bring conflicts of interest that call for new ways of negotiating and collaborating, and recognition of the existing and emerging power relations that influence whose values and interests prevail in shaping development pathways. While many of the chapters are critical to current approaches to adaptation within the field of development, they also show how development can serve as a pathway towards sustainability. Alternatives are already emerging, and the process of adapting to climate change may itself be transforming development paradigms. This book will help researchers, practitioners and policymakers working at the interface between climate change and development to make sense of the changing dynamics and emerging opportunities, to enable efforts that work to create a better life for everyone.

This book presents an introduction, overview and extension of ecosystem management and environmental restoration principles and applications. It develops a new framework and approach to improving the environment through extensive case studies and analysis of environmental rehabilitation initiatives in the San Francisco Bay-Delta, Florida Everglades, Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest, and the Green Heart region of western Netherlands. The book's comparative and integrative approach, with its grounding in ecology, engineering and management, will appeal to those working wherever population, resources and environment are in conflict.

We are at an environmental impasse. Many blame our personal choices about the things we consume and the way we live. This is only part of the problem. Different forms of social power - political, economic and ideological - structure the choices we have available. This book analyses how we make social and environmental history and why we end up where we do. Using case studies from different environmental domains - earth and water, air and fire - Nature, Choice and Social Power examines the form that social power takes and how it can harm the environment and hinder our efforts to act in our own best interests. The case studies challenge conventional wisdoms about why gold is valuable, why the internal combustion engine triumphed, and when and why suburbs sprawled. The book shows how the power of individuals, the power of classes, the power of the market and the power of the state at different times and in different ways were critical to setting us on a path to environmental degradation. It also challenges conventional wisdoms about what we need to do now. Rather than reducing consumption and shrinking from outcomes we don't want, it proposes growing towards outcomes we do want. We invested massive resources in creating our problems; it will take equally large investments to fix them. Written in a clear and engaging style, the book is underpinned with a political economy framework and addresses how we should understand our responsibility to the environment and to each other as individuals within a large and impersonal system.

We are at an environmental impasse. Many blame our personal choices about the things we consume and the way we live. This is only part of the problem. Different forms of social power - political, economic and ideological - structure the choices we have available. This book analyses how we make social and environmental history and why we end up where we do. Using case studies from different environmental domains - earth and water, air and fire - Nature, Choice and Social Power examines the form that social power takes and how it can harm the environment and hinder our efforts to act in our own best interests. The case studies challenge conventional wisdoms about why gold is valuable, why the internal combustion engine triumphed, and when and why suburbs sprawled. The book shows how the power of individuals, the power of classes, the power of the market and the power of the state at different times and in different ways were critical to setting us on a path to environmental degradation. It also challenges conventional wisdoms about what we need to do now. Rather than reducing consumption and shrinking from outcomes we don't want, it proposes growing towards outcomes we do want. We invested massive resources in creating our problems; it will take equally large investments to fix them. Written in a clear and engaging style, the book is underpinned with a political economy framework and addresses how we should understand our responsibility to the environment and to each other as individuals within a large and impersonal system.

Fossil fuels propelled industries and nations into the modern age and continue to powerfully influence economies and politics today. As "Energy Capitals" demonstrates, the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels has proven to be a mixed blessing in many of the cities and regions where it has occurred.
With case studies from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Africa, and Australia, this volume views a range of older and more recent energy capitals, contrasts their evolutions, and explores why some capitals were able to influence global trends in energy production and distribution while others failed to control even their own destinies. Chapters show how local and national politics, social structures, technological advantages, education systems, capital, infrastructure, labor force, supply and demand, and other factors have affected the ability of a region to develop and control its own fossil fuel reserves. The contributors also view the environmental impact of energy industries and demonstrate how, in the depletion of reserves or a shift to new energy sources, regions have or have not been able to recover economically.
The cities of Tampico, Mexico, and Port Gentil, Gabon, have seen their oil deposits exploited by international companies with little or nothing to show in return and at a high cost environmentally. At the opposite extreme, Houston, Texas, has witnessed great economic gain from its oil, natural gas, and petrochemical industries. Its growth, however, has been tempered by the immense strain on infrastructure and the human transformation of the natural environment. In another scenario, Perth, Australia, Calgary, Alberta, and Stavanger, Norway have benefitted as the closest established cities with administrative and financial assets for energy production that was developed hundreds of miles away.
Whether coal, oil, or natural gas, the essays offer important lessons learned over time and future considerations for the best ways to capture the benefits of energy development while limiting the cost to local populations and environments.

The validity of certain critical reasoning steps carried out during or on the sidelines of the environmental science, public health survey, medical experiment, population risk assessment, or disease space-time mapping under conditions of in situ uncertainty and space-time heterogeneity, is often not given sufficient attention and may even be out of the investigator's line of thought. For example, the technical complexity of an environmental exposure experiment may overshadow the logical assumptions made when moving from one phase of the experiment to the next, or the study of population risk assessment may focus on analytical and computational matters, whereas methodological and cultural factors are neglected.This book helps health investigators structure their thinking so that they avoid logical mistakes and argument pitfalls, and also gain new insights about reality, improve their awareness of the environment and context within which one's thinking takes place.

"Toxic Airs "brings together historians of medicine, environmental historians, historians of science and technology, and interdisciplinary scholars to address atmospheric issues on a spectrum of scales from body to place to planet. The chapters analyze airborne and atmospheric threats posed to humans, and contributors demonstrate how conceptions of toxicity have evolved and how humans have both created and mitigated toxins in the air.
Specific topics discussed include medieval beliefs in the pestilent breath of witches, malarial theory in India, domestic and military use of tear gas, Gulf War Syndrome, Los Angeles smog, automotive emissions control, the epidemiological effects of air pollution, transboundary air pollution, ozone depletion, the contributions of contemporary artists to climate awareness, and the toxic history of carbon "die"-oxide. Overall, the essays provide a wide-ranging historical study of interest to students and scholars of many disciplines.

."the book has a number of things to recommend it, particularly for undergraduate teaching, as its scale and readability would be an ethnographic asset for courses on, for example, anthropology and the environment. Its material also provides a number of teachable opportunities, both critically and historically." . Human Ecology "Though predominantly informative about Greek rural life, the book constitutes an illustrative and informative account about human relationships with the natural world more generally." . H-Environment The people of Vassilikos, farmers and tourist entrepreneurs on the Greek island of Zakynthos, are involved in a bitter environmental dispute concerning the conservation of sea turtles. Against the environmentalists' practices and ideals they set their own culture of relating to the land, cultivation, wild and domestic animals. Written from an anthropological perspective, this book puts forward the idea that a thorough study of indigenous cultures is a fundamental step to understanding conflicts over the environment. For this purpose, the book offers a detailed account of the cultural depth and richness of the human environmental relationship in Vassilikos, focusing on the engagement of its inhabitants with diverse aspects of the local environment, such as animal care, agriculture, tourism and hunting. Dimitris Theodossopoulos is a lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Bristol and a senior research fellow at St Peter's College, Oxford. In the early nineties he carried out fieldwork on environmental politics and the indigenous perceptions of the environment in rural Greece. He is currently teaching anthropology and writing on a variety of themes, ranging from the human-environmental relationship to the ethnography of conflict and nationalism in the Balkans. His most recent field of interest focuses on Greek attitudes towards the Turks and the Greco-Turkish politics of friendship."

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Climate change will bring great suffering to communities, individuals and ecosystems. Those least responsible for the problem will suffer the most. Justice demands urgent action to reverse its causes and impacts. In this provocative new book, Paul G. Harris brings together original essays to explore innovative approaches to understanding and implementing climate justice in the future. Through investigations informed by theories from philosophy, politics, sociology, law and economics, this Research Agenda reveals the actors most responsible for climate change and suggests concrete proposals for more effective mitigation. Addressing the distribution of scarce resources and the disproportionate responsibility of affluent nations and people, this insightful book asserts that climate change is a matter of equity, fairness and social and distributive justice. It argues that climate change is shaping up to be the greatest injustice in all of human history. This analytical and thought-provoking Research Agenda will be a valuable tool for climate change researchers while its interdisciplinary approach will appeal to students and academics researching in the fields of global environmental politics, sustainability, international relations, environmental philosophy and law. The examination of the key questions of climate justice from global through to individual levels will also aid policy-makers, practitioners and activists. Contributors include: R. Attfield, I. Bailey, F. Corvino, A. Dietzel, J. Donhauser, P.G. Harris, S. Kopra, J.S. Mastaler, S.R. O'Doherty, G. Pellegrini-Masini, A. Pirni, D. Storey, C. Swingle, C. Tornel, I. Wallimann-Helmer

The invasion and occupation of Kuwait by the Iraqi forces and the resulting Gulf War in 1991 led to unprecedented environmental contamination, the effects of which will be felt for years to come. The air was polluted by emissions from hundreds of burning oil wells, the sea fouled by the largest oil spill in history, and the land scarred by massive bombardment and troop movement. Information regarding this environmental legacy of the Gulf War has hitherto been scattered throughout the popular and scientific press. This is the first book that brings together what is currently known about the environmental aftermath of this tragic war.

This important volume brings together scientific, cultural, literary, historical, and philosophical perspectives to offer new understandings of the critical issues of our ecological present and new models for the creation of alternative ecological futures. At a time when the narrative and theoretical threads of the environmental humanities are more entwined than ever with the scientific, ethical, and political challenges of the global ecological crisis, this volume invites us to rethink the Anthropocene, the posthuman, and the environmental from various cross-disciplinary viewpoints. The book enriches the environmental debate with new conceptual tools and revitalizes thematic and methodological collaborations in the trajectory of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Alliances between the humanities and the social and natural sciences are vital in addressing and finding viable solutions to our planetary predicaments. Drawing on cutting-edge studies in all the major fields of the eco-cultural debate, the chapters in this book build a creative critical discourse that explores, challenges and enhances the field of environmental humanities.

The book shows one individual's (the author) experience of the world, through contacts with government officials and scholars in the Middle East and Asia, Europe and Latin America during the post-Second World War years up to the later 1960s; and then that individual's reflections and study during the succeeding decades, up to and including the first decade of the 21st century, concerning the future of the world and the critical choices that confront the world both in inter-state relations and in maintaining the security of the biosphere.

How does climate change affect social work and social development? What actions are needed to integrate the three pillars of economic development, environmental development and social protection? With global warming and the increase in natural disasters due to the emission of greenhouse gases, an alternative approach to the natural environment is vital. The main focus of this volume is to emphasize the person-in-environment concept and to find measures for its implementation. For social work the environment has traditionally been viewed as a world of human relationships as opposed to the interaction between man and environment. This informative and incisively written edited collection brings together experts from around the world to analyze the person-in-environment concept and to find measures for its implementation. Through the presentation of theoretical and practical platforms for environmental social work or 'green social work', we hope to bring about a new paradigmatic shift in our attitude to the concept of person-in- environment.

Identifying, measuring and improving social impact is a significant challenge for corporate and private foundations, charities, NGOs and corporations. How best to balance possible social and environmental benefits (and costs) against one another? How does one bring clarity to multiple possibilities and opportunities? Based on years of work and new field studies from around the globe, the authors have written a book for managers that is grounded in the best academic and managerial research.It is a practical guide that describes the steps needed for identifying, measuring and improving social impact. This approach is useful in maximizing the impact of different types of investments, including grants and donations, impact investments, and commercial investments.With numerous examples of actual organizational approaches, research into more than fifty organizations, and extensive practical guidance and best practices, Measuring and Improving Social Impacts fills a critical gap.

Bioregionalism and Global Ethics suggests that current trends towards globalization are creating entirely new social and environmental problems which require cross-cultural dialogue towards the creation of a new "global ethic." Current models of development are based on an implicit global ethic which advocates bringing everyone in the world up to the same standards of living as those prevalent in the so-called "developed" countries through unlimited economic growth. Evanoff argues that this goal is not only unattainable but also undesirable because it ultimately undermines the ability of the environment to sustain both human and non-human flourishing, exacerbates rather than overcomes social inequalities both within and between cultures, and fails to achieve genuine human well-being for all but a wealthy minority. An alternative bioregional global ethic is proposed which seeks to maximize ecological sustainability, social justice, and human well-being through the creation of economically self-sufficient and politically decentralized communities delinked from the global market but confederated at appropriate levels to address problems that transcend cultural borders. Such an ethic is based on a transactional view of the relationship between self, society, and nature, which attempts to create more symbiotic and less conflictual modes of interaction between human cultures and natural environments, while promoting the flourishing of both. Instead of a single monolithic global ethic, bioregionalism suggests that there should be sufficient convergence between cultures to allow for the successful resolution of mutual problems, but also sufficient divergence to enable the continued evolution of both biological and cultural diversity on a global scale.

Trust is an important factor in risk management, affecting judgements of risk and benefit, technology acceptance and other forms of cooperation. In this book the world's leading risk researchers explore all aspects of trust as it relates to risk management and communication. Drawing on a wide variety of disciplinary approaches and empirical case studies (on topics such as mobile phone technology, well-known food accidents and crises, wetland management, smallpox vaccination, cooperative risk management of US forests and the disposal of the Brent Spar oil drilling platform), this is the most thorough and up-to-date examination of trust in all its forms and complexities. The book integrates diverse research traditions and provides new insights into the phenomenon of trust. Factors that lead to the establishment and erosion of trust are identified. Insightful analyses are provided for researchers and students of environmental and social science and professionals engaged in risk management and communication in both public and private sectors. Related titles The Tolerability of Risk (2007) 978-1-84407-398-6

* The first and only comprehensive international sourcebook of Sustainability Appraisal/Assessment (SA) principles, approaches and instruments from all governments, businesses and NGOs worldwide* The essential guide for all impact assessment practitioners, business analysts, researchers, policymakers and international organizations* Written by two world-renowned practitioners and authors, with support from a wealth of international organizations and expertsA unique state-of-the-art analysis of the status and scope of SA, drawing on a wealth of international experiences and approaches. This fully comprehensive guide highlights how SA can be used to integrate the key environmental, social and economic (ESE) pillars of sustainability into decision-making at all levels-from policy to project to investment-by government, business and industry, or international organizations. Distilling both published and unpublished materials, as well as in-depth workshop discussions and contributions from a range of leading experts, organizations and agencies, this book provides an indispensable window into the field. It will be of significant value to professionals everywhere who are in need of a solid, practical guide to what constitutes SA and, more importantly, how and when it can be applied.

Sustainability Appraisal is a sourcebook of the state-of-the-art of this rapidly emerging and diversifying area. It draws on a wealth of international experiences and approaches to illustrate the status and scope of Sustainability Appraisal/Assessment (SA) This comprehensive guide highlights how SA can be used to analyse and integrate the key environmental, social and economic pillars of sustainability into decision-making at all levels, from policy to project to investment, by government, business and industry, or international organizations. Distilling both published and unpublished materials, and with contributions from a range of leading experts, organizations and agencies, this book will be of significant value to professionals everywhere who are in need of a solid, reference guide to what constitutes SA practice and, more importantly, how and when it can be applied.

"Bernd Heinrich is one of the finest naturalists of our time. "Life Everlasting" shines with the authenticity and originality that are unique to a life devoted to natural history in the field."--Edward O. Wilson, author of "The Future of Life" and "The Social Conquest of Earth"
How does the animal world deal with death? And what ecological and spiritual lessons can we learn from examining this? Bernd Heinrich has long been fascinated by these questions, and when a good friend with a terminal illness asked if he might have his "green burial" at Heinrich's hunting camp in Maine, it inspired the acclaimed biologist and author to investigate. "Life Everlasting "is the fruit of those investigations, illuminating what happens to animals great and small after death.
From beetles to bald eagles, ravens to wolves, Heinrich reveals the fascinating and mostly hidden post-death world that occurs around us constantly, while examining the ancient and important role we too play as scavengers, connecting death to life.
"Despite focusing on death and decay, Life Everlasting is far from morbid; instead, it is life-affirming . . . convincing the reader that physical demise is not an end to life, but an opportunity for renewal."--"Nature"
"A worldwide tour of the role of death in nature that is consistently fascinating and fun to read."--"Seattle Times"

Knowledge is power. Get informed and choose action over despair. Everything you need to know about the earth and the life it supports - right now. From the challenges we face with global environmental, health, poverty, equality, technological, political and justice issues to the pioneering places and people making a difference to our future. With 40 simple ways to support change. 'While the hour is late, the future remains ours to make. This hugely enjoyable book is a powerful introduction to the way things are and the way things can be. Keep it by your bed.' Tim Smit, co-founder The Eden Project