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.

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.

The editor takes an excitingly broad and refreshing approach to environmental justice, tracing the subject from its early developments to its contemporary need for a new non-anthropocentric ontology responsive to questions of human-non-human justice. This invaluable study includes 24 of the best available research articles in the field and offers a stimulating journey into the rich ambiguities, tensions and promise of environmental justice for the 21st century and beyond.

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.

Focusing on so much more than plastic pollution, this ahead-of-the curve book exposes the extensive damage being done to the oceans that most of us don't know about, and what simple, everyday changes we can make to help protect our seas. When we think about climate change, our first thoughts are often of burning rainforests, cities filled with smog, and mammals teetering on the brink of extinction. But what about the effects of our actions off-land? What is really going on out of sight below the surface of the waves? And what more can we do beyond just reducing our plastic usage? This book is a necessary call to act and educate ourselves on the damage human activity is having on our seas, and a guide to how you can help stop it, whether you live on the coastline or hundreds of miles from the ocean. Shocking but enlightening, it illustrates exactly what the problems are, how they impact the ocean, why it is so important to keep our oceans healthy for our own benefit, and what we can do individually and collectively to help save our seas. Oceans cover over 70% of our planet and provide us with more life support than we can comprehend. Learn how to be an ocean hero every day, and do your part to love and protect our planet before it is too late...

From sun-baked Black Mesa to the icy coast of Labrador, native lands for decades have endured mining ventures that have only lately been subject to environmental laws and a recognition of treaty rights. Yet conflicts surrounding mining development and indigenous peoples continue to challenge policy-makers.
This book gets to the heart of resource conflicts and environmental impact assessment by asking why indigenous communities support environmental causes in some cases of mining development but not in others. Saleem Ali examines environmental conflicts between mining companies and indigenous communities and with rare objectivity offers a comparative study of the factors leading to those conflicts.
"Mining, the Environment, and Indigenous Development Conflicts" presents four cases from the United States and Canada: the Navajos and Hopis with Peabody Coal in Arizona; the Chippewas with the Crandon Mine proposal in Wisconsin; the Chipewyan Inuits, Dene and Cree with Cameco in Saskatchewan; and the Innu and Inuits with Inco in Labrador. These cases exemplify different historical relationships with government and industry and provide an instance of high and low levels of Native resistance in each country. Through these cases, Ali analyzes why and under what circumstances tribes agree to negotiated mining agreements on their lands, and why some negotiations are successful and others not.
Ali challenges conventional theories of conflict based on economic or environmental cost-benefit analysis, which do not fully capture the dynamics of resistance. He proposes that the underlying issue has less to do with environmental concerns than with sovereignty, which often complicates relationships between tribes and environmental organizations. Activist groups, he observes, fail to understand such tribal concerns and often have problems working with tribes on issues where they may presume a common environmental interest.
This book goes beyond popular perceptions of environmentalism to provide a detailed picture of how and when the concerns of industry, society, and tribal governments may converge and when they conflict. As demands for domestic energy exploration increase, it offers clear guidance for such endeavors when native lands are involved.

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.

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.

This book works with two contrasting imaginings of 1960s London: the one of the excess and comic vacuousness of Swinging London, the other of the radical and experimental cultural politics generated by the city's counterculture. The connections between these two scenes are mapped looking firstly at the spectacular events that shaped post-war London, then at the modernist physical and social reconstruction of the city alongside artistic experiments such as Pop and Op Art. Making extensive use of London's underground press the book then explores the replacement of this seemingly materialistic image with the counterculture of underground London from the mid-1960s. Swinging City develops the argument that these disparate threads cohere around a shared cosmology associated with a new understanding of nature which differently positioned humanity and technology. The book tracks a moment in the historical geography of London during which the city asserts itself as a post-imperial global city. Swinging London it argues, emerged as the product of this recapitalisation, by absorbing avant-garde developments from the provinces and a range of transnational, mainly transatlantic, influences.

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

A bestseller on Amazon.com within months of its first release, Alan AtKisson's debut book quickly became a modern classic of sustainability literature. Global companies, grassroots groups, university courses, government agencies, and even the US Army ordered it by the box. Now fully revised and updated, Believing Cassandra: How to be an Optimist in a Pessimist's World is even more relevant, fresh, and motivating than when it first appeared in 1999. In a style that's refreshingly candid and vivid, with unforgettable personal anecdotes, AtKisson provides us with a bridge over the sea of despair, and shows us how to catch the wave to an enticing, sustainable future. He empowers the reader to join the pioneers who created the ideas, techniques and practices of sustainable living - the people who prove Cassandra's warnings wrong, by believing in them, and taking strategic action.

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.

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.

This reissue, first published in 1995, focuses on philosophy and social science in human ecology, and includes case studies dealing with the problems of political implementation of development plans and schemes. Part One deals with theory, including a comprehensive introduction to the field and an overview of the conceptual modelling typical in human ecology. Part Two moves towards questions of human behaviour and action, exploring the relationship between environmental ethics and policy in terms of the justification and implementation of human interactions with nature and the environment on an ecologically sustainable basis. In Part Three, the author focuses on environmental policy in China since 1949 and on a regional case study in India. The final part of the book discusses the prospects for sustainable development more broadly, in terms of favouring ecological and cultural variety in agriculture and of viewing the relationship between human beings and the natural environment as a matter of overexploitation rather than crisis.

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.

One of the key issues in climate change is the lack of effective governance. Climate change governance should address the impact of climate variability, climate policy responses, and associated socio-economic issues, which affect the ability of countries to achieve sustainable development goals. It requires a multi-level consensus, considering views and interest of all relevant stakeholders, on international and national legal frameworks, and a harmonised, transparent and equitable foundation for the implementation of such frameworks. Academics and practitioners from across Asia and beyond analyse country cases, including Bangladesh, India, Japan, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore and Sri Lanka explore themes such as public policy, water, environment, and agriculture. Together they provide a holistic view of how different governance approaches and perspectives mitigate and adapt the impacts of climate change.

Environmental assessment and management involve the production of scientific knowledge and its use in decision-making processes. The result is that within these essentially rational, political assessment frameworks, experts are creating and applying scientific knowledge for decision and management purposes that actually have strong ethical and aesthetic dimensions. Yet these rational political frameworks lack the tools to provide guidance on ethical and aesthetic issues that affect the wider public. This revolutionary work argues that ethical and aesthetic dimensions can only be brought into environmental politics and policies by citizens actively taking a stand on the specific matters in question. The author draws on Habermas trisection of rationality as cognitive-instrumental, moral-practical and aesthetic-expressive, to suggest that truly effective environmental policy needs to activate all three approaches and not favour only the rational. To achieve this objective, the author argues that public participation in environmental policy and assessment is necessary to counteract the dictatorship of technical and economic instrumentality in environmental policy - the failure to take ethical and aesthetic rationalities into account - and, more importantly, how such policy is applied on the ground to shape our natural and material world.

This practical guide, written by a practitioner for practitioners, presents a coherent and straightforward 'how-to-do-it' approach to the strategic environmental assessment (SEA) process. Part one provides an overview of the aims, principles, advantages and problems of SEA as well as looking at key SEA regulations and their requirements. Part two examines the SEA process in considerable detail including setting the policy context, describing the baseline, identifying alternatives, predicting and evaluating impacts and using the SEA information in decision-making. Part three is devoted to assuring SEA quality with a discussion of resources and capacity building. This new edition incorporates five years' worth of practical application of the SEA Directive and SEA practice more broadly. Additions and updates include: the findings of various reviews into SEA effectiveness and efficiency emerging approaches to identifying and comparing alternatives, cumulative impacts, the likely future baseline without the plan, documenting changes made to the plan in response to the SEA process, and environmental limits consideration of both the 'baseline-led' and the 'objectives-led' approach to SEA, and the two approaches' advantages and disadvantages SEA's links to 'appropriate assessment' of plans under the European Habitats Directive. Employing a host of real-life case studies and examples, each chapter presents a range of techniques and discusses what the final product should look like. Appendices provide a wealth of additional information including text of the SEA Directive and the UNECE Protocol on SEA, and a 'toolkit' of SEA techniques. The approach and techniques in Strategic Environmental Assessment in Action are useful for anyone carrying out or studying SEA at any level, from policy to programme, international to local, but particularly for practitioners responsible for implementing the SEA Directive.

Crucial Issues in Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol: Asia and the World focuses on responses to climate change in the world's most populous region. This book provides the most comprehensive insight to the climate change discourse within Asia to date by drawing on the diverse disciplines and experience of legal practitioners, climate change consultants, government officials and academics. Individual chapters address issues such as how the various Asian countries - highly disparate in their cultures, socio-economic conditions and political systems - are responding to climate change, the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change, and the effective implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in Asia.

Climate and Society presents from a transdisciplinary view, climate and its changes, impact and perception. The history of climate and its different approaches over time - which are anthropocentric and more system-oriented, academic and application-driven - are reviewed, as are the possibilities of managing climate, in particular by steering the greenhouse gas emissions. Most importantly, the concepts of climate as a resource for societies are discussed and the emergence of climate non-constancy and its impact, studied. In essence, this book provides an absorbing account of the cultural history of climate and relates it to contemporary scientific knowledge about climate, climate change and its impact.

Winner of the Charles H. Cooley Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Richard G. Mitchell Jr. spent more than a dozen years among survivalists at public conferences, private meetings, and clandestine training camps across America. He takes us inside a compelling, hidden world more connected to the chaos of modern life many of us experience than the label separatist suggests. In survivalism Mitchell found a profound and meaningful critique of contemporary industrial society, a subculture in which the real evil is not repressive government but the far more insidious influence of a Planet Microsoft mentality with its abundance of empty choices. Survivalists, Mitchell shows us, are seeking resistance, not struggling against it; they are looking for ways to define themselves and test their talents in a society that is becoming devitalized and formless.

Protected areas and conservation policies ore usually established with only local nature and wildlife in mind. Yet they con have far reaching consequences for local populations, often undermining their access to resources and their livelihoods. This book is the first comprehensive discussion of the social consequences of protected area schemes and conservation policies. Drawing on case studies from North America, Europe, Asia, Central America and Africa, it critically reviews current trends in protected area management, and shows how local people have been affected in terms of their customary rights, livelihoods, wellbeing and social cohesion. The loss of secure livelihoods ultimately threatens conservation, as poverty and environmental degradation intensify in and around protected areas. The leading authorities who have contributed to this ground breaking volume argue for a thorough overhaul of conservation thinking and practice.