At approximately 8:45 a.m. on 6 December 1917, the Belgian Relief vessel IMO struck the munitions-laden freighter Mont-Blanc in Halifax Harbour. The Mont-Blanc exploded in a devastating 2.9 kiloton blast, which killed 2,000 people and injured 9,000. More than 6,000 people were made homeless, and an additional 12,000 were left without shelter. Bearing Witness tells the story of the Explosion, and the catastrophic damage it caused, through the eyes and words of more than two dozen journalists and record keepers who experienced it first hand. Their accounts reveal a unique perspective, offering new detail about the tragedy and providing insight into the individuals who struggled to articulate the magnitude of the shocking event to the rest of the world. In addition to the original work by journalists and record keepers, Michael Dupuis provides over 30 photographs and illustrations, several previously unseen, and a detailed timeline of journalistic activities from the time of the Explosion on December 6 to December 16.

There is a perennial gap between theory and practice, between academia and active professionals in the field of disaster management. This gap means that valuable lessons are not learned and people die or suffer as a result. This book opens a dialogue between theory and practice. It offers vital lessons to practitioners from scholarship on natural hazards, disaster risk management and reduction and developments studies, opening up new insights in accessible language with practical applications. It also offers to academics the insights of the enormous experience practitioners have accumulated, highlighting gaps in research and challenging assumptions and theories against the reality of experience. Disaster Management covers issues in all phases of the disaster cycle: preparedness, prevention, response and recovery. It also addresses cross-cutting issues including political, economic and social factors that influence differential vulnerability, and key areas of practice such as vulnerability mapping, early warning, infrastructure protection, emergency management, reconstruction, health care and education, and gender issues. The team of international authors combine their years of experience in research and the field to offer vital lessons for practitioners, academics and students alike.

Published with ProVention Consortium, UNDP and UN-Habitat 'This excellent book is essential reading for those concerned with urban risk and its reduction in Africa, the most rapidly urbanizing region of the world.' Professor Jo Beall, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics 'At last a book that recognizes the impacts of disasters on Africa's 350 million urban dwellers, including the many disasters that get overlooked and go unrecorded. But also a book that, through careful case studies, shows what creates disaster risk and what local measures can be taken to address it.' David Satterthwaite, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). 'This innovative volume combines the latest conceptualisations of urban disaster risk and vulnerability with case studies from across the African continent on how existing and innovative information can inform efforts to address the problems. Coverage ranges from the major catastrophes of news headlines to small, everyday disasters with which poor urban residents have to cope in their survival strategies. Written by international authorities and local specialists, this extremely useful book should find a place in the hands of academics and practitioners alike.' Professor David Simon, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London This is a one-of-a-kind book packed with original research and offering an innovative way of thinking about the reduction of risk in rapidly urbanizing cities across the globe. It is a must-have for professionals, researchers and policy makers. The book addresses four inter-related themes critical for urban risk reduction: environment; livehood; urban governance and the generation of urban risks. Its focus is on Africa, the most rapidly urbanizing world region, but it illustrates global processes. Part one reviews development, urbanization and disaster risk in Africa as a whole, identifies state-of-the-art practices and policies for building urban resilience and provides a tool kit for urban risk reduction. It also presents a powerful conceptual framework to analyse and compare disaster risk and resilience in different cities and communities. Part two presents detailed case studies from Algeria, Ghana, Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa illustrating vulnerability to hazards ranging from earthquake to shack fire, environmental health hazards, traffic hazards and flooding. Part three looks to the future and outlines a vision for a safer urban Africa based on achieving gains in human security through inclusive governance and investment in the creative capacities of Africa's urban dwellers. With foreword by Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director, UN-HABITAT

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which covered nearly thirty thousand square miles across seven states, was the most destructive river flood in U.S. history. Due to the speed of new media and the slow progress of the flood, this was the first environmental disaster to be experienced on a mass scale. As it moved from north to south down an environmentally and technologically altered valley, inundating plantations and displacing more than half a million people, the flood provoked an intense and lasting cultural response. The Flood Year 1927 draws from newspapers, radio broadcasts, political cartoons, vaudeville, blues songs, poetry, and fiction to show how this event took on public meanings. Americans at first seemed united in what Herbert Hoover called a "great relief machine," but deep rifts soon arose. Southerners, pointing to faulty federal levee design, decried the attack of Yankee water. The condition of African American evacuees in "concentration camps" prompted pundits like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells to warn of the return of slavery to Dixie. And environmentalists like Gifford Pinchot called the flood "the most colossal blunder in civilized history." Susan Scott Parrish examines how these and other key figures--from entertainers Will Rogers, Miller & Lyles, and Bessie Smith to authors Sterling Brown, William Faulkner, and Richard Wright--shaped public awareness and collective memory of the event. The crises of this period that usually dominate historical accounts are war and financial collapse, but The Flood Year 1927 enables us to assess how mediated environmental disasters became central to modern consciousness.

One of the "New York Times"'s Best Ten Books of the Year
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the 2014 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the "Los Angeles Times" Book Prize, and the Ridenhour Book Prize
An ALA Notable Book, finalist for the NYPL 2014 Helen Bernstein Award, finalist for the SIBA Book Award, and shortlisted for ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal
An NPR "Great Reads" Book, a "Chicago Tribune" Best Book, a "Seattle Times "Best Book, a "Time "Magazine Best Book, "Entertainment Weekly"'s #1 Nonfiction Book, a "Christian Science Monitor "Best Book, and a "Kansas City Star" Best Book
Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink's landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina - and her suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice.
In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos.
"
"After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths.
"Five Days at Memorial," the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.
In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters--and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, "Five Days at Memorial" radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Die Maja-kalender sê ons einde kom in 2012.

Maar daar was al oorgenoeg ánder eindes vir die wêreld of die menslike beskawing voorspel. Johannes de Villiers ondersoek die aardskuddende gevare wat ons (miskien?) inwag. Die profesieë van die Majas en Nostradamus, ons ontstuimige son, natuurrampe, meteoriete uit die buitenste ruim, selfs zombies en eindvisies eie aan Suid-Afrika word hier saamgevat. Daar is hoop, selfs al gebeur die ergste.

Vind uit wat om te doen in die eerste 5 minute ná die groot ramp, en ’n egte “survivalist” wys ’n bietjie van hoe om in die veld te oorleef. En dan wat van mense wat moet voortleef ná hulle verkeerde voorspellings gemaak het?

Bringing together the voices of local scholars in the Philippines, this book offers critical insights into one of the world's most disaster-prone regions. The Asia-Pacific region is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world, with the effects of climate change contributing to rising sea levels and increasingly frequent typhoons and floods. Case studies in this book examine such disasters, including the aftermath of 2013 super typhoon Haiyan. Discussions are centred around four themes: women and empowerment, economics and recovery, community and resilience, and religion and spirituality. Through its analysis, the book demonstrates the scopes, inequities and inefficiencies of policies and responses, as well as forms of empowerment and resilience, in meeting challenges in disaster-afflicted communities in the Philippines. Its conclusions provide a more nuanced and grounded perspective of policies, practices and approaches in the sociology of disasters today.

When disaster strikes, our instinctive response is to make things better, not only as individuals but also as groups, organisations, communities and major institutions within society. With increasing climate-related disasters and the potential for future global pandemics, philanthropy will continue to play an essential role. Yet our knowledge of how philanthropic responses to disasters are motivated, organised and received is fragmented. This book is a step toward curating our existing knowledge in the emerging field of 'disaster philanthropy' and to building a robust base for future research, practice and public policy. The authors highlight unknowns and ambiguities, extensions and unexplored spaces, and challenges and paradoxes. Above all, they recognise that philanthropic responses to disasters are complex, conditional and subject to change.

This book employs epistemological, methodological and discursive approaches to explore the practices of tourism stakeholders in Covid-19 affected destinations and to understand and explain their everyday real-time doings and sayings. It discusses the changing practices of tourists and stakeholders at both micro and meso levels and provides a range of contexts and destination case studies offering insights into supply and demand. The issues examined in the volume will have continued implications for further study of the relationships between tourism, crises, pandemics and global travel. It will be a useful resource for researchers and students in tourism studies, geography, politics and policy, as well as sociology, history, crisis management and development studies.

The Handbook provides a comprehensive statement and reference point for hazard and disaster research, policy making, and practice in an international and multi-disciplinary context. It offers critical reviews and appraisals of current state of the art and future development of conceptual, theoretical and practical approaches as well as empirical knowledge and available tools. Organized into five inter-related sections, this Handbook contains sixty-five contributions from leading scholars. Section one situates hazards and disasters in their broad political, cultural, economic, and environmental context. Section two contains treatments of potentially damaging natural events/phenomena organized by major earth system. Section three critically reviews progress in responding to disasters including warning, relief and recovery. Section four addresses mitigation of potential loss and prevention of disasters under two sub-headings: governance, advocacy and self-help, and communication and participation. Section five ends with a concluding chapter by the editors. The engaging international contributions reflect upon the politics and policy of how we think about and practice applied hazard research and disaster risk reduction. This Handbook provides a wealth of interdisciplinary information and will appeal to students and practitioners interested in Geography, Environment Studies and Development Studies.

This edited collection explores aspects of contemporary war that affect average people -physically, emotionally, and ethically through activities ranging from combat to television viewing. The aim of this work is to supplement the usual emphasis on strategic and national issues of war in the interest of theorizing aspects of war from the point of view of individual experience, be the individual a combatant, a casualty, a supporter, opponent, recorder, veteran, distant viewer, an international lawyer, an ethicist or other intellectual. This volume presents essays that push the boundaries of war studies and war thinking, without promoting one kind of theory or methodology for studying war as experiential politics, but with an eye to exploring the possibilities and encouraging others to take up the new agenda. It includes new and challenging thinking on humanitarianism and war, new wars in the Third World, gender and war thinking, and the sense of the body within war that inspires recent UN resolutions. It also gives examples that can change our understanding of who is located where doing what with respect to war -women warriors in Sierra Leone, war survivors living with their memories, and even an artist drawing something seemingly intangible about war -the arms trade. The unique aspect of this book is its purposive pulling together of foci and theoretical and methodological perspectives from a number of disciplines on a variety of contemporary wars. Arguably, war is an activity that engages the attention, the politics, and the lives of many people. To theorize it with those lives and perspectives in mind, recognizing the political contexts of war, is long overdue. This inter-disciplinary book will be of much interest to students of war studies, critical security studies, gender studies, sociology and IR in general.

Climate Change, Disasters and the Refugee Convention is concerned with refugee status determination (RSD) in the context of disasters and climate change. It demonstrates that the legal predicament of people who seek refugee status in this connection has been inconsistently addressed by judicial bodies in leading refugee law jurisdictions, and identifies epistemological as well as doctrinal impediments to a clear and principled application of international refugee law. Arguing that RSD cannot safely be performed without a clear understanding of the relationship between natural hazards and human agency, the book draws insights from disaster anthropology and political ecology that see discrimination as a contributory cause of people's differential exposure and vulnerability to disaster-related harm. This theoretical framework, combined with insights derived from the review of existing doctrinal and judicial approaches, prompts a critical revision of the dominant human rights-based approach to the refugee definition.

Pandemic policies have been the focus of fierce lobbying competition by different social and economic interests. In Viral Lobbying a team of expert authors from across the social and natural sciences analyse patterns in and implications of this 'viral lobbying'. Based on elite surveys and focus group interviews with selected groups, the book provides new evidence on the lobbying strategies used during the COVID 19 pandemic, as well as the resulting access to and lobbying influence on public policy. The empirical analyses reach across eight European countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom), as well as the EU-level. In particular, the book draws on responses from approximately 1,600 interest organisations in two waves of a cross-country survey (in 2020 and 2021, respectively). This quantitative data is supplemented by qualitative evidence from a series of 12 focus groups with organised interests in Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands conducted in spring 2021.

The art and literature of our time is pregnant with catastrophe, with weather and water, wildness and weirdness. The Anthropocene - the term given to this geological epoch in which humans, anthropos, are wreaking havoc on the earth - is to be found bubbling away everywhere in contemporary cultural production. Typically, discussions of how culture registers, figures and mediates climate change focus on 'climate fiction' or 'cli-fi', but The Anthropocene Unconscious is more interested in how the Anthropocene and especially anthropogenic climate destabilisation manifests in texts that are not overtly about climate change - that is, unconsciously. The Anthropocene, Mark Bould argues, constitutes the unconscious of 'the art and literature of our time'. Tracing the outlines of the Anthropocene unconscious in a range of film, television and literature - across a range of genres and with utter disregard for high-low culture distinctions - this playful and riveting book draws out some of the things that are repressed and obscured by the term 'the Anthropocene', including capital, class, imperialism, inequality, alienation, violence, commodification, patriarchy and racial formations. The Anthropocene Unconscious is about a kind of rewriting. It asks: what happens when we stop assuming that the text is not about the anthropogenic biosphere crises engulfing us? What if all the stories we tell are stories about the Anthropocene? About climate change?

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Though a globally shared experience, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected societies across the world in radically different ways. This book examines the unique implications of the pandemic in the Global South. With international contributors from a variety of disciplines including health, economics and geography, the book investigates the pandemic's effects on development, medicine, gender (in)equality and human rights, among other issues. Its analysis illuminates further subsequent crises of interconnection, a pervasive health provision crisis and a resulting rise in socioeconomic inequality. The book's assessment offers an urgent discourse on the ways in which the impact of COVID-19 can be mitigated in some of the most challenging socioeconomic contexts in the world.

For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios.

Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19. The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected.

A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.

Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.

Measured in terms of loss of life and property, hurricanes rank near the top of natural hazards. And with increasing development of coastal areas in the United States, the societal impact of these storms is likely to increase. This book, an applied climatology of North Atlantic hurricanes, is intended to serve as an intermediary between hurricane climate research and the users of hurricane information. It discusses: the climatology of tropical cyclones in general and those of the North Atlantic in particular; major North Atlantic hurricanes, focusing on US landfalling storms; prediction models used in forecasting; and societal vulnerability to hurricanes, including ideas for modelling the relationship between climatological data and decision-making in the social and economic sciences.

The introduction of a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the 1980 edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders heralded the dawn of modern psychotraumatology. On the strength of the conceptual refinements offered by this new diagnosis, much consideration has been given to the challenge of effecting early intervention after trauma. To do so offered the prospect of preventing initial reactions developing into a debilitating chronic disorder with complicating co-morbidities.

Some of the original proponents of early intervention protocols have continued to claim that such provision will mitigate the effects of traumatic events, prevent the onset of a traumatic stress syndrome, allow early detection of those who may require further help and help re-establish a homeostatic equilibrium. The evidence base for making these claims has never been made explicit. More recent clinical trials suggest a more qualified position ought to be taken with respect to what should reasonably and reliably claimed for early intervention techniques used to date. More alarming is the growing cluster of studies warning against certain types of intervention.

The optimism which once prevailed with respect to what early intervention after trauma might achieve has, in recent years, been replaced by controversy and defensively entrenched posturing.

This book aims to provide a comprehensive update on the accumulated experience in the field of early intervention after trauma and defines standards for service provision. It does so by reviewing the historical traditions and theoretical foundations for early interventions and links recommendations for psychological first aid to a substantial body of multidisciplinary evidence. The ultimate aim of this book is to reconstruct an informed evidence base for early intervention after trauma.

This open access edited volume critically examines a coherence building opportunity between Climate Change Adaptation, the Sustainable Development Goals and Disaster Risk Reduction agendas through presenting best practice approaches, and supporting Irish and international case studies. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted existing global inequalities and demonstrated the scope and scale of cascading socio-ecological impacts. The impacts of climate change on our global communities will likely dwarf the disruption brought on by the pandemic, and moreover, these impacts will be more diffuse and pervasive over a longer timeframe. This edited volume considers opportunities to address global challenges in the context of developing resilience as an integrated development continuum instead of through independent and siloed agendas.

A riveting indictment of a government that fails to help citizens in need of aid, protection, and humanity The Shaming State argues that Americans have been abandoned by a government that has relinquished its duties of care toward its citizens. Sara Salman describes a government that withholds care in times of need and instead shames the very citizens it claims to serve, both poor and middle class. She argues that the state does so by emphasizing personal responsibility, thus tacitly blaming the needy for relying on state programs. This blame is pervasive in the American cultural imagination, existing in political discourse and internalized by Americans. This book explores how shaming is exhibited by state and political institutions by showing the ways in which the state withholds care, and how people who need that care are humiliated for failing to be self-sufficient. The Shaming State investigates the vanishing horizon of social rights in the United States and the dwindling of government support to both lower- and middle-class people. Focusing on Iraqi refugees and white home-owning New Yorkers, Salman demonstrates how both groups were faced with immense difficulty and humiliation when searching for access to assistance programs maintained by the government. Looking at the long-range trends, she argues that the last forty years have made the United States a market fundamentalist country, where the government does not offer unified aid and increasingly asks citizens to assume personal responsibility in the face of uncontrollable disasters. Whether it was Hurricane Katrina almost two decades ago or the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the indifferent and stagnant response by the American government not only amplified the consequences of these disasters but also increased hostility towards the vulnerable groups who needed help. Ultimately, The Shaming State tells stories of abandonment, loss, shame, and rage experienced by Americans and how the government has let them down time and time again.

'A work of sheer brilliance, beauty and bravery' Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less 'Masterly... Her essays have a clarity and prescience that imply a sort of distant, retrospective view, like postcards sent from the near future' New York Times We stare at our phones. We keep multiple tabs open. Our chats and conversations are full of the phrase "Did you see?" The feeling that we're living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gotten. Poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert's The Unreality of Memory consists of a series of lyrical and deeply researched meditations on what our culture of catastrophe has done to public discourse and our own inner lives. In these tender and prophetic essays, she focuses in on our daily preoccupation and favorite pasttime: desperate distraction from disaster by way of a desperate obsession with the disastrous. Moving from public trauma to personal tragedy, from the Titanic and Chernobyl to illness and loss, The Unreality of Memory alternately rips away the facade of our fascination with destruction and gently identifies itself with the age of rubbernecking. A balm, not a burr, Gabbert's essays are a hauntingly perceptive analysis of the anxiety intrinsic in our new, digital ways of being, and also a means of reconciling ourselves to this new world. 'One of those joyful books that send you to your notebook every page or so, desperate not to lose either the thought the author has deftly placed in your mind or the title of a work she has now compelled you to read.' Paris Review

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, disaster preparedness and response has developed into a discrete subspecialty in medicine, and the paramount health care initiative of the U.S. Government. The mental health component of disaster response is a serious subject of study, as trauma is associated with a substantial and long-lasting psychologic burden, both on an individual and community level. The psychopathologies associated with disaster are also quite broad, varying from several different types of post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorders to acute variations of grief-associated depression. This book is the definitive reference on mental health and disasters, focused on the assessment and treatment of the full spectrum of psychopathologies associated with many different types of individual disasters. The logistics for utilizing pre-existing community-based mental health services, as well as the development of new programs, are covered in depth. Case studies and perspectives for improving care, incorporating lessons from Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, are included in detail.

Food poisoning cases in South Africa have risen, though the increase remains unquantified. Existing legislation has gaps and fails to fully align with international obligations. Government departments and agencies adopt fragmented approaches to handle food safety concerns. As key stakeholders, communities are not fully aware of their role in food safety surveillance, leaving them vulnerable to foodborne illnesses.

The book highlights the serious global issue of food poisoning, food fraud, and the potential presence of food terrorism in South Africa. Its goal is to raise awareness about the importance of food safety surveillance, even in the face of the current socio-economic challenges, while promoting internationally recognized practices to combat the rising incidence of food fraud and food poisoning in the country.

The book highlights the root cause of human trafficking and analyses how factors of vulnerability affect the marginalized, especially during and after a disaster. Human trafficking like other studies on disaster research, needs to be tackled from various perspectives such as empowering the vulnerable people, creating awareness, strengthening the disaster risk reduction measures and creating a common platform to fight the vicious circle by breaking its continuity and making strategies victim centric and people friendly. The book adapts a multidisciplinary approach embedding concepts from political, social, economic and anthropological perceptions. The discourse in the book revolves around the emotional and psycho-social stress factors including weak implementation of laws and policies at various levels. The content weaves around three themes -- magnitude and interlinks between disaster and human trafficking; policies and protocols on disaster risk reduction and human trafficking and community participation and institutional support. Through these themes, the volume works on identification of the vulnerable areas which are not in compliance with the Sendai Framework of Action, 2015 in the backdrop of the Disaster Management Act of India, 2005. The volume will be of immense interest to a wide range of practitioners, researchers, academicians, policy makers, political leaders, gender experts, international organizations, disaster management authorities, civil society organisations, and scholars working in the area of human rights in general and trafficking in particular. Note: This research was funded by Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). Human Trafficking is complex, layered and lies at the intersections of multiple vulnerabilities, gender being among the most significant ones. This gets exacerbated during both natural and human made disasters. Any attempt to either understand or address it will be fraught with challenges if women and girls' unique vulnerabilities, as well as their needs, voice, choice, agency and safety is not centre-staged in any effort. Mondira's book does exactly that...it succinctly and in simple words explores the compounding discriminations, including structural inequalities, that cause and result in women and girls differential gendered vulnerabilities to being trafficked during disasters. Once this is understood, the solutions can be specific, gender responsive, and sustainable. - Anju Dubey Pandey, Gender Responsive Governance and Ending Violence against Women Specialist, UN Women, New Delhi, India

This book gathers and disseminates opinions, viewpoints, studies, forecasts, and practical projects which illustrate the various pathways sustainability research and practice may follow in the future, as the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic and prepares itself to the possibilities of having to cope with similar crisis, a product of the Inter-University Sustainable Development Research Programme (IUSDRP) https://www.haw-hamburg.de/en/ftz-nk/programmes/iusdrp.html and the European School of Sustainability Science and Research (ESSSR) https://esssr.eu/. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to severe human suffering, and to substantial damages to economies around the globe, affecting both rich countries and developing ones. The aftermath of the epidemic is also expected to be felt for sometime. This will also include a wide range of impacts in the ways sustainable development is perceived, and how the principles of sustainability are practised. There is now a pressing need to generate new literature on the connections between COVID-19 and sustainability. This is so for two main reasons. Firstly, the world crisis triggered by COVID-19 has severely damaged the world economy, worsening poverty, causing hardships, and endangering livelihoods. Together, these impacts may negatively influence the implementation of sustainable development as a whole, and of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in particular. These potential and expected impacts need to be better understood and quantified, hence providing a support basis for future recovery efforts. Secondly, the shutdown caused by COVID-19 has also been having a severe impact on teaching and research, especially -but not only - on matters related to sustainability. This may also open new opportunities (e.g. less travel, more Internet-based learning), which should be explored further, especially in the case of future pandemics, a scenario which cannot be excluded. The book meets these perceived needs.