People of European descent form the bulk of the population in most of the temperate zones of the world--North America, Australia and New Zealand. The military successes of European imperialism are easy to explain because in many cases they were achieved by using firearms against spears. Alfred Crosby, however, explains that the Europeans' displacement and replacement of the native peoples in the temperate zones was more a matter of biology than of military conquest. Now in a new edition with a new preface, Crosby revisits his classic work and again evaluates the ecological reasons for European expansion. Alfred W. Crosby is the author of the widely popular and ground-breaking books, The Measure of Reality (Cambridge, 1996), and America's Forgotten Pandemic (Cambridge, 1990). His books have received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, the Medical Writers Association Prize and been named by the Los Angeles Times as among the best books of the year. He taught at the University of Texas, Austin for over 20 years. First Edition Hb (1986): 0-521-32009-7 First Edition Pb (1987): 0-521-33613-9

In this report the Commission describes its framework for protection of the environment and how it should be applied within the Commission's system of protection. The report expands upon its objectives in relation to protection of the environment and explains the different types of exposure situations to which its recommendations apply. Further recommendations are made with regard to how the Commission's recommendations can be implemented to satisfy different forms of environmental protection objectives and additional information is also given with regard to, in particular, communication with other interested parties and stakeholders. Issues that may arise in relation to compliance are also discussed and a final chapter discusses the overall implications of the Commission's work in this area to date. Appendices 1 and 2 provide some numerical information relating to the Reference Animals and Plants. An Annex to this report considers some of existing types of environmental protection legislation currently in place in relation to large industrial sites and practices, and the various ways in which wildlife are protected from various threats arising from such sites.

The year 2009 will be pivotal for Earth's climate. As scientists warn that we have only a few years to reverse the rise in greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid abrupt and catastrophic climate change, the world community has agreed to finalize negotiations on a new climate agreement in Copenhagen in late 2009. Intended to inject new inspiration and energy into national and international climate negotiations, this 26th edition of State of the World examines the steps we urgently need to take to prevent a global catastrophe while adapting to the now inevitable climatic shifts already set in motion. As well as the profound, long-term consequences of global warming, this volume explores the policy changes needed and the benefits that will flow from the transition to a low-carbon economy. It also includes 22 summaries on the many important issues linked to climate change, plus a Climate Change Reference Guide and Glossary. Published annually in 28 languages, State of the World is long established as the most authoritative and accessible annual guide to our progress towards a sustainable future. It is relied upon by national governments, UN agencies, development workers and law-makers for its up-to-the-minute analysis and information. Essential reading for anyone concerned with building a positive, global future.

Current population growth is leading to a depletion in natural resources and could eventually cause irreversible damage to the environment. This book attempts to explain trends in the growth of the global population and the ecological consequences by blending the insights of analytical economics and behavioural ecology.The book begins by looking at population from a long term perspective and considers the ecological influences before going on to examine the economics of population growth. Reproduction decisions of the family are then analysed, and the welfare effect of these decisions on society as a whole are considered. Anup Shah pays particular attention to policies which could try to prevent or cure overpopulation. He asks whether there is a case for intervening in order to prevent overpopulation, and suggests that one way of reducing the effects of population growth is through technological advances which can help compensate for the adverse external effects. Finally, he examines the future of urban centres in the light of population growth. The book is written from a multidisciplinary approach and will have a wide readership throughout the social sciences. It will have particular appeal for economists, geographers, earth scientists, ecologists, environmentalists and those working in the area of development studies.

What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization-in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics-which have transformed the way we live. Societies that have undergone all four transitions emerge into an era of radically different population dynamics, food surpluses (and waste), abundant energy use, and expanding economic opportunities. Simultaneously, in other parts of the world, hundreds of millions remain largely untouched by these developments. Through erudite storytelling, Vaclav Smil investigates the fascinating and complex interactions of these transitions. He argues that the moral imperative to share modernity's benefits has become more acute with increasing economic inequality, but addressing this imbalance would make it exceedingly difficult to implement the changes necessary for the long-term preservation of the environment. Thus, managing the fifth transition-environmental changes from natural-resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and global warming-will determine the success or eventual failure of the grand transitions that have made the world we live in today.

Increasing recognition of the impact that globalization may be having on public health has led to widespread concern about the risks arising from emerging and re-emerging diseases, environmental degradation and demographic change. A distinguished, international team of contributors covers a comprehensive range of topics and geographic regions herein, arguing that health policy making is being affected by globalization and that these effects are, in turn, contributing to the global health issues faced today.

This book examines the relationship between the indigenous peoples of northern Ecuador and disease, especially those infections introduced by Europeans during the sixteenth century. It addresses an important and often overlooked element in the history of Amerindian populations: their biological adaptability and resilience. But it is more than a history of disease incidents, medical responses, and population trends. The history of the biological experience under colonial rule. It differs from other studies in the field by its emphasis on the relationship between biological and social responses.

The Climate Change 2001 volumes of the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC provide the most comprehensive assessment of climate change since its second report, Climate Change 1995. This Synthesis Report gives a comprehensive summary of the main points of the three separate volumes of the Report: The Scientific Basis; Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability; and Mitigation.

Some issues addressed in this Working Group III volume are mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, managing biological carbon reservoirs, geo-engineering, costing methods, and decision-making frameworks.

The lives of people around the world, particularly in developed countries, depend on relatively inexpensive movement of people and goods. Now, more than ever, the prospect of rising costs puts continuation of this transport dependence in question. Costs could rise significantly due to the needs to reduce pollution, reverse urban sprawl, enhance security and, above all, use fuel that will become dramatically more expensive than those used now. This book sets out the challenges that will soon threaten modern society's dependence on low-cost transport in the light of the problems posed by oil supply and climate change. It proposes organizational and technical innovations that could ensure effective, secure movement of people and goods in ways that minimize environmental impacts and make the best use of renewable sources of energy. The authors conclude that transport in the first half of the 21st century will feature at least two revolutions. One will involve the use of electric drives rather than internal combustion engines. The other will involve powering these drives directly from the electric grid rather than from on-board fuel. The authors also address revolutions in marine transport and aviation and analyze the politics and business of transport and how these will undergo profound change in the decades ahead. This fresh look at the topic offers explanations, challenges the failures of governments and industry and proposes strategies and actions that can move transport towards sustainability.

Analyses of the ecology, biology and society of past and present-day hunter-gatherers are at the core of this interdisciplinary volume. Since the seminal work of Man the Hunter in 1968, new research in these three areas has become increasingly specialized, and the lines of communication among academic disciplines have all but broken down. This volume aims to reestablish an interdisciplinary debate, presenting critical issues commanding an ongoing interest in hunter-gatherer research, covering the evolution and history, demography, biology, technology, social organization, art, and language of diverse groups. As a reference text, this book will be useful to scholars and students of social anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology, and human sciences.

In this book, Michael L. Ross explores the breakdown of the institutions that govern natural resource exports in developing states. Using case studies of timber booms in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, he shows that these institutions often break down when states receive positive trade shocks--unanticipated windfalls. Drawing on the theory of rent-seeking, he suggests that these institutions succumb to a problem he calls "rent-seizing"--the predatory behavior of politicians who seek to supply rent to others, and who purposefully dismantle institutions that restrain them.

This is a history of the impact of humankind on the natural environment from earliest times to the present. The first edition has been widely adopted in universities, acclaimed both for its wide scholarship and its author's readable style. The new edition is fully revised throughout and takes account of comments and suggestions received from all over the world. It has been restructured into a form appropriate for new methods of university teaching, the diagrams have been clarified, and references and sections of further reading provided at the end of each chapter.

To the underlying argument that access to energy is a crucial influence on the use and exploitation of nature, the author has now added a revealing perspective drawn from a critical understanding of the evolution of world systems. In a new and thoughtful conclusion he considers the variable rate of environmental change, the problems of prediction, and the complex issues surrounding the formulation and implementation of national and international policy

Written in an engaging and accessible manner by one of the leading scholars in his field, Environment and Social Theory, completed revised and updated with two new chapters, is an indispensable guide to the way in which the environment and social theory relate to one another. This popular text outlines the complex interlinking of the environment, nature and social theory from ancient and pre-modern thinking to contemporary social theorizing. John Barry: examines the ways major religions such as Judaeo-Christianity have and continue to conceptualize the environment analyzes the way the non-human environment features in Western thinking from Marx and Darwin, to Freud and Horkheimer explores the relationship between gender and the environment, postmodernism and risk society schools of thought, and the contemporary ideology of orthodox economic thinking in social theorising about the environment. How humans value, use and think about the environment, is an increasingly central and important aspect of recent social theory. It has become clear that the present generation is faced with a series of unique environmental dilemmas, largely unprecedented in human history. With summary points, illustrative examples, glossary and further reading sections this invaluable resource will benefit anyone with an interest in environmentalism, politics, sociology, geography, development studies and environmental and ecological economics.

This second edition of An Environmental History of the World continues to present a concise history, from ancient to modern times, of the interactions between human societies and the natural environment, including the other forms of life that inhabit our planet. Throughout their evolutionary history, humans have affected the natural environment, sometimes with a promise of sustainable balance, but also in a destructive manner. This book investigates the ways in which environmental changes, often the result of human actions, have caused historical trends in human societies. This process has happened in every historical period and in every part of the inhabited earth.

The book is organized into ten chapters. The main chapters follow a chronological path through the history of mankind, in relationship to ecosystems around the world. The first explains what environmental history is, and argues for its importance in understanding the present state of the world's ecological problems. Chapters two through eight form the core of the historical analysis, each concentrating on a major period of human history (pre-civilized, early civilizations, classical, medieval, early modern, early and later twentieth century, and contemporary) that has been characterized by large-scale changes in the relationship between human societies and the biosphere, and each gives several case studies that illustrate significant patterns occurring at that time. The chapters covering contemporary times discuss the physical impacts of the huge growth in population and technology, and the human responses to these problems. Our moral obligations to nature and how we can achieve a sustainable balance between technology and the environment are also considered. This revised second edition takes account of new research and the course of history containing new sections on global warming, the response of New Orleans to the hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the experience of the Dutch people in protecting their low-lying lands against the encroachments of rivers, lakes, and the North Sea. New material is also offered on the Pacific Islands, including the famous case of Easter Island.

This is an original work that reaches further than other environmental histories. Rather than looking at humans and the environment as separate entities, this book places humans within the community of life. The relationship between environmental thought and actions, and their evolution, is discussed throughout. Little environmental or historical knowledge is assumed from the reader in this introduction to environmental history. We cannot reach a useful understanding of modern environmental problems without the aid of perspective provided by environmental history, with its illustrations of the ways in which past decisions helped or hindered the interaction between nature and culture. This book will be influential and timely to all interested in or researching the world in which we live.

While scientists usually examine either ecological systems or social systems, the need exists for an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of environmental management and sustainable development. Developed under the auspices of the Beijer Institute in Stockholm, this volume analyzes social and ecological linkages in selected ecosystems using an international and interdisciplinary case study approach. The chapters provide detailed information on a variety of management practices for dealing with environmental change. Taken as a whole, the book contributes to the greater understanding of essential social responses to changes in ecosystems. A key feature is a set of new, or rediscovered, principles for sustainable ecosystem management.

The first comprehensive survey of Chinese environmental history, this book crystallizes a new field of scholarship that studies the creation of distinct environments as a result of the interaction of human social systems with the natural world. Pioneering essays explore new methodologies of historical environmental research, comparisons of China with the West and Japan, and the impact of the early modern ecological transformation on the spread of disease. An indispensable book for those trying to understand the foundations of modern China or the origins of many of contemporary China's most daunting challenges.

Human activity is undeniably affecting the rates of change in many parts of the global system. How this global change develops into the future is vitally important, but modeling these changes requires a complex, integrated assessment of a wide range of disciplines in science and social science. This book describes the structure, assumptions, philosophy and results of an advanced global integrated assessment model: TARGETS. For a number of future directions selected on the basis of divergent cultural perspectives, the model charts global implications in terms of population and health, energy, land- and water-use and biogeochemical cycles. This integrated assessment approach has led to innovative fresh insights into global change. The book will help policymakers formulate the strategies required for a sustainable global future.

In Louis XIV's France, land took on new importance in politics and court life. A sequestered aristocracy promenaded in formal gardens while the military moved across the landscape, marking state boundaries with fortresses and refiguring the interior with canals and forests. Chandra Mukerji highlights the connections between the seemingly disparate activities of engineering and garden design, showing how the gardens at Versailles showcased French skills in using nature and art to design a distinctively French landscape and create a naturalized political territoriality.

In Louis XIV's France, land took on new importance in politics and court life. A sequestered aristocracy promenaded in formal gardens while the military moved across the landscape, marking state boundaries with fortresses and refiguring the interior with canals and forests. Chandra Mukerji highlights the connections between the seemingly disparate activities of engineering and garden design, showing how the gardens at Versailles showcased French skills in using nature and art to design a distinctively French landscape and create a naturalized political territoriality.

This is a book about the biological conquest of the New World. Taking as a case study the sixteenth century history of a region of highland central Mexico, it shows how the environmental and social changes brought about by the introduction of Old World species aided European expansion. The book spells out in detail the environmental changes associated with the introduction of Old World grazing animals into New World ecosystems, demonstrates how these changes enabled the Spanish takeover of land, and explains how environmental changes shaped the colonial societies.

In general terms, one way of describing the world we live in is to say that it is made up of nature and society, and that human beings belong to both. This was the first volume to be published which addresses the historical contexts of the relations between these two characteristics of human nature. A distinguished international team aims to contribute - through selective, interdisciplinary studies - to a much-needed but currently scant debate over the reciprocal links between conceptions of nature and conceptions of society from the ancient Greek kosmos to late twentieth-century 'ecology'. Individual essays and the general conclusions of the volume are important not only for our understanding of the evolution of knowledge of nature and of society, but also for an awareness of the types of truth and perception produced in the process.

In general terms, one way of describing the world we live in is to say that it is made up of nature and society, and that human beings belong to both. This is the first volume to be published that addresses the historical contexts of the relations between these two characteristics of human nature. Individual essays and the general conclusions of the volume are important not only for our understanding of the evolution of knowledge of nature and of society, but also for an awareness of the types of truth and perception produced in the process.

Feelings about lost or destroyed places rouse our deepest emotions. Losing a home or a suburb or leaving a homeland can be like losing a loved one. This book examines what it means to lose a place forever and why we return, and keep on returning, to these places so large in our memories. It considers many lost towns, suburbs, and homes: Darwin after Cyclone Tracy, the flooding of the town of Adaminaby in New South Wales, the inundation of Lake Pedder in Tasmania, bushfire at Macedon in Victoria, migration from other countries, the clearing of neighbourhoods for freeways and the everyday circumstances which force people from their land. Peter Read establishes how important the places we live in are, and how much we grieve when we lose them. It tells a human story, which is disturbing, poetic, and often inspiring. Everyone who has lost a place of importance to them will find it unforgettable.