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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Pollution & threats to the environment > Global warming
This book offers a new ecosystemic approach to the understanding of mangrove and salt marsh ecosystems. Brazil has one of the largest areas of mangroves in the world, where salt marshes might or might not be associated. Different landscapes comprise the extensive coastline, where mangrove and salt marsh species' composition is discussed through the analysis of physiography, zonation, and succession processes. Both salt marsh and mangrove plants and the associated macroalgae will be characterized in their ecophysiological and phenological aspects, as well as genetic and epigenetic diversity. The chapters on microbial diversity and litterfall expose the well-known importance of these ecosystems as highly productive carbon sinks and pumps. The associated fauna of invertebrates (benthic meio and macrofaunas, especially brachyuran crabs) and vertebrates (fishes, birds, and mammals) are presented in a special section. The conservational approach encompasses issues, such as historical ecology, economic valuation, protected areas, environmental education, climate changes, and adaptive management.
Part of the What Everyone Needs to Know (R) series, David Day's book on Antarctica examines the most forbidding and formidably inaccessible continent on Earth. Antarctica was first discovered by European explorers in 1820, and for over a century following this, countries competed for the frozen land's vast marine resources-namely, the skins and oil of seals and whales. Soon the entire territory played host to competing claims by rival nations. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 was meant to end this contention, but countries have found other means of extending control over the land, with scientific bases establishing at least symbolic claims. Exploration and drilling by the United States, Great Britain, Russia, Japan, and others has led to discoveries about the world's climate in centuries past-and in the process intimations of its alarming future. Delving into the history of the continent, Antarctic wildlife, arguments over governance, underwater mountain rangers, and the continent's use in predicting coming global change, Day's work sheds new light on a territory that, despite being the coldest, driest, and windiest continent in the world, will continue to be the object of intense speculation and competition.
This volume is a practical guide that helps the reader build a quick, evidence-based understanding of green-growth strategies and challenges. Its cogent analysis of real-life case studies enables policy makers and company executives identify successful strategies they can adopt, and pitfalls they can avoid, in drafting and implementing green growth policies. The contributors' empirical assessment of these studies identifies the structural conditions required for economic growth to be compatible with environmental sustainability and how the transition to a new economic paradigm should be managed. A crucial addition to the debate now beginning in earnest around the world, this volume attempts to understand how we can nurture a new-born model of sustainable growth and help it evolve to maturity.
Energy efficiency plays and will continue to play an important role in the world to save energy and mitigate greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions. However, little is known on how much additional capital should be invested to ensure using energy efficiently as it should be, and very little is known which sub-areas, technologies, and countries shall achieve maximum greenhouse gasemissions mitigation per dollar of investment in energy efficiency worldwide. Analyzing completed and slowly moving energy efficiency projectsby the Global Environment Facilityduring 1991-2010, "Closing the Gap: GEF Experiences in Global Energy Efficiency "evaluates impacts of multi-billion-dollar investments in the world energy efficiency. It covers the following areas: 1. Reviewing the world energy efficiency investment and disclosing the global energy efficiency gapand market barriersthat cause the gap; 2. Leveraging private funds with public funds and other resources in energy efficiency investments; using these funds in tangible and intangible asset investments; 3. Investment effectiveness in dollars per metric ton of CO2emissions mitigation in 10 energy efficiency sub-areas; 4. Major barriers causing failure and abandonments in energy efficiency investments; 5. Quantification of direct and indirect CO2emissions mitigations inside and outside a project boundary; and 6. Classification and estimation of CO2emissions mitigations from tangible and intangible asset investments. "Closing the Gap: GEF Experiences in Global Energy Efficiency "can serve as a handbook for policymakers, project investors and managers, and project implementation practitioners in need of benchmarksin energy efficiency project investments for decision-making. It can also be used by students, researchers and other professionals in universities and research institutions in methodology development for evaluating energy efficiency projectsand programs. "
Over the next few years, political and financial power will move in the direction of individuals, companies and nations that are able to use energy in a more efficient way. This book describes this challenge and presents a way forward by which we may achieve the goal of increased energy efficiency in the different areas that need to change.
Sustainable mobility is a highly complex problem as it is affected by the interactions between socio-economic, environmental, technological and political issues. Energy, Transport, & the Environment: Addressing the Sustainable Mobility Paradigm brings together leading figures from business, academia and governments to address the challenges and opportunities involved in working towards sustainable mobility. Key thinkers and decision makers approach topics and debates including: energy security and resource scarcity greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions urban planning, transport systems and their management governance and finance of transformation *the threats of terrorism and climate change to our transport systems. Introduced by a preface from U.S. Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu and an outline by the editors, Dr Oliver Inderwildi and Sir David King, Energy, Transport, & the Environment is divided into six sections. These sections address and explore the challenges and opportunities for energy supply, road transport, urban mobility, aviation, sea and rail, as well as finance and economics in transport. Possible solutions, ranging from alternative fuels to advanced urban planning and policy levers, will be examined in order to deepen the understanding of currently proposed solutions within the political realities of the dominating economic areas. The result of this detailed investigation is an integrated view of sustainable transport for both people and freight, making Energy, Transport, & the Environment key reading for researchers, decision makers and policy experts across the public and private sectors.
Global climatic change will most likely affect natural resources and human living conditions in semiarid regions. This volume presents disciplinary as well as integrative methods to assess these impacts considering the interactions between climate variability and change, water availability, land-use systems, and quality of life. Taking the semiarid northeastern area of Brazil as an example, a wide range of expertise and knowledge (from integrated water analyses to transregional migration) is necessary to understand the complex relationship between natural and socio-economic systems. Tools to integrate this knowledge and make it available for the strategic planning of sustainable development are described. This book is a summary of the main research results and the presentations given at the final conference of the WAVES Program on June 25-26 2001 in Fortaleza (Brazil).
Climate change is the greatest issue of our time - and yet too often literature on the subject is considered only in the bracket of 'environmental' writing, divorced from culture, society and politics. The New Poetics of Climate Change argues instead that the emergence of global warming presents a fundamental challenge to the way we read and write poetry - the way we think - in the modern age. In this important new book, Matthew Griffiths demonstrates that Modernism's radical reinvigorations of literary form over the last century represent an engagement with key intellectual questions that we still need to address if we are to comprehend the scale and complexity of climate change. Through an extended examination of Modernist poetry, including the work of T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Basil Bunting and David Jones, and their influence on present-day poets including Jorie Graham, Griffiths explores how Modernist modes can help us describe and engage with the terrifying dynamics of a warming world and offer a poetics of our climate.
As plants see it, humans are not the masters of the Earth but only one of its most unpleasant and irksome residents. They have been on the planet for only about 300,000 years ago (nothing compared to the three billon years of plant evolution), yet have changed the conditions of the planet so drastically as to make it a dangerous place for their own survival. It's time for the plants to offer advice. In this playful, philosophical manifesto, Stefano Mancuso, expert on plant intelligence, presents a new constitution on which to build our future as beings respectful of the Earth and its inhabitants. These eight articles - the fundamental pillars on which plant life is based - must henceforth regulate all living beings.
This book provides a comprehensive approach to all aspects of water-related subjects affected by climate change that expand readers' attitudes toward future of the management strategies and improve management plans. It summarizes climate change scenarios, models, downscaling methods, and how to select the appropriate method. It also introduces practical steps in assessing climate change impacts on water issues through introducing hydrological models and climate change data applications in hydrologic analysis. The book caters to specialist readers who are interested in analyzing climate change effects on water resources, and related issues can gain a profound understanding of the practical concepts and step-by-step analysis, which is enriched with real case studies all around the world. Moreover, readers will be familiar with potential mitigation and adaptation measures in sustainable water engineering, considering the results of hydrologic modeling.
The promises, dreams and hopes of architects for future cities are now inextricably linked to climate change. Architects, Sustainability and the Climate Emergency: A Political Ecology chronicles how architects have shaped their ideas of the city-and sustainability-as knowledge of the climate emergency has unfolded. Have architects responded to the climate crisis too slowly? Describing a political ecology of architecture, Peter Raisbeck draws on architectural history, theory and practice, and the climate imaginaries of architects themselves. This exploration indicates how architects have viewed the climate emergency and positions architecture alongside the politics of climate and development studies. Raisbeck questions to what degree the traditional agency of architects leads to a political authority isolated from nature, human-environment systems and the nonhuman ecological subjects rapidly approaching tipping points. The fluidity of the climate emergency itself and its unfolding relationship to architectural knowledge suggests that new approaches, agencies and subjectivities are urgently required. As architects struggle to respond to the climate emergency, this book is an important and timely contribution to sustainability, climate and development debates. Architects, Sustainability and the Climate Emergency: A Political Ecology is a necessary provocation of a critical topic.
This open access edited collection explores various aspects of how oceanic im/ mobilities have been framed and articulated in the literary and cultural imagination. It covers the entanglements of maritime mobility and immobility as they are articulated and problematized in selected literature and cultural forms from the early modern period to the present. In particular, it brings cultural mobility studies into conversation with the maritime and oceanic humanities. The contributors examine the interface between the traditional Eurocentric imagination of the sea as romantic and metaphorical, and the materiality of the sea as a deathbed for racialized and illegalized humans as well as non-human populations
This book examines ways of conserving, managing, and interacting with plant and animal resources by Native American cultural groups of the Pacific Coast of North America, from Alaska to California. These practices helped them maintain and restore ecological balance for thousands of years. Building upon the authors' and others' previous works, the book brings in perspectives from ethnography and marine evolutionary ecology. The core of the book consists of Native American testimony: myths, tales, speeches, and other texts, which are treated from an ecological viewpoint. The focus on animals and in-depth research on stories, especially early recordings of texts, set this book apart. The book is divided into two parts, covering the Northwest Coast, and California. It then follows the division in lifestyle between groups dependent largely on fish and largely on seed crops. It discusses how the survival of these cultures functions in the contemporary world, as First Nations demand recognition and restoration of their ancestral rights and resource management practices.
The book focuses on the key contemporary issue of Climate change, constructing the narrative from traditions' of Urbanism through its Axiology and Epistemology. The book is a rich collection of seven chapters and attempts to address each of the aspects and building further for traditional Urbanism. The book further explores the synergies of traditional urbanism for Climate change through climate responsive practices with main thrust on Energy use. The said understanding is validated through the case example of walled city of Jaipur: World Heritage Site 2019. The chapters enumerate how the traditional urbanism of Jaipur was designed that evolved as climate responsive typology for the respective geography.
This book is an original, accessible, and thought-provoking introduction to the severe and broad-ranging challenges that climate change presents and how societies can respond. It synthesizes and deploys cutting-edge scholarship on the range of social, economic, political, and philosophical issues surrounding climate change. The treatment is introductory, but the book is written "with attitude", for nobody has yet charted in coherent, integrative, and effective fashion a way to move societies beyond their current paralysis as they face the challenges of climate change. The coverage begins with an examination of science, public opinion, and policy making, with special attention to organized climate change denial. The book then moves to economic analysis and its limits; different kinds of policies; climate justice; governance at all levels from the local to the global; and the challenge of an emerging "Anthropocene" in which the mostly unintended consequences of human action drive the earth system into a more chaotic and unstable era. The conclusion considers the prospects for fundamental transition in ideas, movements, economics, and governance.
'Important and empowering' - BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH 'Get this great guide and be inspired' - STEPHEN FRY 'A handbook of hope ... Buy it, read it, start changing things right now' - JOANNA LUMLEY _______________ The enormity of climate change and biodiversity loss can leave us feeling overwhelmed. How can an individual ever make a difference? Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell know firsthand how spectacularly nature can bounce back if you give it the chance. And what comes is not just wildlife in super-abundance, but solutions to the other environmental crises we face. The Book of Wilding is a handbook for how we can all help restore nature. It is ambitious, visionary and pragmatic. The book has grown out of Isabella and Charlie’s mission to help rewild Britain, Europe and the rest of the world by sharing knowledge from their pioneering project at Knepp in Sussex. It is inspired by the requests they receive from people wanting to learn how to rewild everything from unprofitable farms, landed estates and rivers, to ponds, allotments, churchyards, urban parks, gardens, window boxes and public spaces.. The Book of Wilding has the answers. _______________ 'Brilliantly readable and incredibly hard-working' - HUGH FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL 'A deep, dazzling and indispensable guide to the most important task of all: the restoration of the living planet' - GEORGE MONBIOT
Climate change is modifying, in varying measure, the coastal geography of States. The phenomenon is not temporary but is expected to carry on during the 21st century and beyond. A distinctive feature of modern international law is the concept of maritime zones. Each maritime area is subject to an intricate scheme of States’ rights and obligations. Coastal geography is a fundamental component of a long-standing method, developed and agreed upon between States, to establish the outward limits of these areas. A feature of this method is the baseline. In international law it is the only reference line from where the outward limits of maritime zones are measured. There are clear rules on how this is established along a coast. There is a concern amongst a number of States that rising sea water levels as a result of climate change may compel them to shift their baselines inward thus affecting the outward limits of their maritime zones. It is clear that the stability of maritime boundaries is put into question and this may bring about serious political, legal and economic repercussions. This concern may also affect the outcome of dispute settlement procedures before a competent international court or tribunal the purpose of which is to resolve overlapping maritime claims. Key questions emerge. What is the role played by coastal geography in the legal regime determining the outward limits of maritime zones? What are the consequences of changes to coastal geography? To what extent are dispute settlement procedures before a Court or Tribunal immune from this concern? Is international law able to address this? If so, in what way and what are its limits? What can be done to resolve this?
This book is one of the outputs of the conference on 'Environmental Change, Forced Migration, and Social Vulnerability' (EFMSV) held in Bonn in October 2008. Migration is one of the oldest adaptation measures of humanity. Indeed, without migration the multitude of civilizations and interactions between them - peaceful and otherwise - would be hard to imagine. The United Nations (UN)-led global dialogue on migration is a clear sign that governments and the specialized UN agencies and bodies have recognized the need to view, govern, manage, and facilitate migration; to mitigate its negative effects; and to capitalize on the positive ones. It is a common expectation among experts that environmentally induced migration will further increase in the decades to come. Hence, next to the political, economic, ethnic, social, financial, humanitarian, and security aspects of migration, the environmental component should urgently be considered in the ongoing international dialogue on migration. This need is also a challenge. Without appropriate scientific knowledge, assessment, definitions, and classifications, the intergovernmental frameworks would not be able to deal with these complex phenomena. The Five-Pronged-Approach as formulated by the United Nations University (UNU) may serve as a framework to identify the additional dimensions of this challenge next to - and actually simultaneously with - the scientific one.
Managing Global Warming: An Interface of Technology and Human Issues discusses the causes of global warming, the options available to solve global warming problems, and how each option can be realistically implemented. It is the first book based on scientific content that presents an overall reference on both global warming and its solutions in one volume. Containing authoritative chapters written by scientists and engineers working in the field, each chapter includes the very latest research and references on the potential impact of wind, solar, hydro, geo-engineering and other energy technologies on climate change. With this wide ranging set of topics and solutions, engineers, professors, leaders and policymakers will find this to be a valuable handbook for their research and work.
The global economy is still experiencing the effects of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Over the last three years economies worldwide have slowed and international trade has declined. Most importantly, the crisis has negatively affected the lives of ordinary people, creating a sense of uncertainty about the future and thus posing a direct threat to social cohesion, thus posing new challenges to political leadership. Climate change is also forcing the developed world to formulate a common strategy that will balance growth and environmental protection. The aim of the book is to examine these international trends and comprehend the transformations that take place internationally. The multi-authored work presents several accounts on the course of vital aspects of politics and economy. As a result, the contents of the book focusses on four main subjects: 1) global economic crisis and its consequences, 2) economic governance, 3) political leadership, and 4) climate change. |
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