Given what we know about climate change, should we still be raising and eating cattle? And how do we weigh the cultural and economic value of cattle against their environmental impact? This engaging book brings history, science, economics and popular culture together in a timely discussion about whether current practices can be justified in a period of rapid climate change.

Journalist Gregory Mthembu-Salter first encountered South Africa’s love of cattle during his own lobola negotiations. The book traces his personal journey through kraals, rangelands and feedlots across South Africa to find out more about the national hunger for cattle. He takes a broad sweep – drawing on such diverse sources as politicians involved in land reform, history, braai-side interviews with cattle farmers and abattoir owners, conversations with his mother-in-law, and analysis of cutting-edge science.

Mthembu-Salter suggests that perhaps 'cattle can remain wanted and treasured … more as living assets, kept in modest numbers on land where crops will not thrive, whose beef is eaten rarely – and, when it is, is savoured.'

Emerging Technologies for Sustainable Desalination Handbook provides professionals and researchers with the latest treatment activities in the advancement of desalination technology. The book enables municipalities and private companies to custom-design sustainable desalination plants that will minimize discharge, energy costs and environmental footprint. Individual case studies are included to illustrate the benefits and drawback of each technique. Sections discuss a multitude of recently developed, advanced processes, along with notable advances made in existing technologies. These processes include adsorption, forward osmosis, humidification and dehumidification, membrane distillation, pervaporation and spray type thermal processes. In addition, theoretical membrane materials, such as nanocomposite and carbon nanotube membranes are also explored. Other chapters cover the desalination of shale gas, produced water, forward osmosis for agriculture, desalination for crop irrigation, and seawater for sustainable agriculture. International in its coverage, the chapters of this handbook are contributed by leading authors and researchers in all relevant fields.

Water Scarcity and Sustainable Agriculture in Semiarid Environment: Tools, Strategies and Challenges for Woody Crops explores the complex relationship between water scarcity and climate change, agricultural water-use efficiency, crop-water stress management and modeling water scarcity in woody crops. Understanding these cause- and effect relationships and identifying the most appropriate responses are critical for sustainable crop production. The book focuses on Mediterranean environments to explain how to determine the most appropriate strategy and implement an effective plan; however, core concepts are translational to other regions. Informative for those working in agricultural water management, irrigation and drainage, crop physiology and sustainable agriculture.

Energy crises, which amount to painful combinations of energy shortages and soaring prices, have struck the United States several times in recent decades. Each time they have resulted in political and economic shockwaves because, when gasoline becomes more expensive, the American public tends to react with anger and suspicion. Energy crises instantly put related issues at the top of the nation's agenda, sometimes with dramatic consequences for public policy. What can we learn from recent history, particularly as it may predict the role that volatile public opinion will play throughout the energy policy making process? As The Politics of Energy Crises demonstrates, one can discern patterns in politics and policymaking when looking at the cycles of energy crises in the United States. As such it is the first systematic historical study of political conflict, public opinion, and organized interest group and presidential and congressional action on energy issues, starting with the 1973 OPEC boycott and continuing through the present day. By charting the commonalities in political battles during energy crises, the authors make prognoses about what future energy crises will mean for United States policy.

In the first decade of the 21st century, five rising powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) formed an exclusive and informal international club, the BRICS. Although neither revolutionaries nor extreme revisionists, the BRICS perceive an ongoing global power shift and contest the West's pretensions to permanent stewardship of the existing economic order. Together they have exercised collective financial statecraft, employing their expanding financial and monetary capabilities for the purpose of achieving larger foreign policy goals. This volume examines the forms and strategies of such collective financial statecraft, and the motivations of each individual government for collaborating through the BRICS club. Their cooperative financial statecraft takes various forms, ranging from pressure for "inside reforms" of either multilateral institutions or global markets, to "outside options" exercised through creating new multilateral institutions or jointly pushing for new realities in international financial markets. To the surprise of many observers, the joint actions of the BRICS are largely successful. Although each member has its unique rationale for collaboration, the largest member, China, controls resources that permit it the greatest influence in intra-club decision-making. The BRICS cooperate due to both common aversions (for example, resentment over being perennial junior partners in global economic and financial governance and resistance to infringements on their autonomy due to U.S. dollar dominance and financial power) and common interests (such as obtaining greater voice in international institutions, as the IMF). The group seeks reforms, influence, and enhanced leadership roles within the liberal capitalist global system. Where blocked, they experiment with parallel multilateral institutions in which they are the dominant rule-makers. The future of the BRICS depends not only on their bargaining power and adjustment to market players, but also on their ability to overcome domestic impediments to sustainable economic growth, the basis for their international influence.

Appreciating that coastal areas are under threat from misuse and overuse worldwide, this book reviews the need for marine conservation, summarizes general measures for ocean and coastal conservation, and explains the rationale for establishing marine protected areas. The second half of the book is a guideline for designing and implementing protected areas in order to make them viable and long-lasting in their effectiveness.

Post-conflict peacebuilding efforts can fail if they do not pay sufficient attention to natural resources. Natural resources - diamonds, oil, and minerals - are frequently at the heart of historic grievances, and have caused or funded at least eighteen conflicts since 1990. The same resources can play a central role in post-conflict peacebuilding, providing revenue for cash-starved governments, basic services for collapsed economies, and means for restoring livelihoods. To date, there is a striking gap in knowledge of what works, what does not, and how to improve peacebuilding through more effective and systematic management of natural resources. Post-Conflict Peacebuilding and Natural Resource Management addresses this gap by examining the growing literature on the topic and surveying experiences across more than forty post-conflict countries. The six-volume series includes more than 130 chapters from over 200 researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.

McKittrick’s history of the 1918 Kalahari Thirstland Redemption Scheme reveals the environment to have been central to South African understandings of race. The plan fanned white settlers’ visions for South Africa, stoked mistrust in scientific experts, and influenced ideas about race and the environment in South Africa for decades to come.

In 1918, South Africa’s climate seemed to be drying up. White farmers claimed that rainfall was dwindling, while nineteenth-century missionaries and explorers had found riverbeds, seashells, and other evidence of a verdant past deep in the Kalahari Desert. Government experts insisted, however, that the rains weren’t disappearing; the land, long susceptible to periodic drought, had been further degraded by settler farmers’ agricultural practices—an explanation that white South Africans rejected. So when the geologist Ernest Schwarz blamed the land itself, the farmers listened. Schwarz held that erosion and topography had created arid conditions, that rainfall was declining, and that agriculture was not to blame. As a solution, he proposed diverting two rivers to the Kalahari’s basins, creating a lush country where white South Africans could thrive. This plan, which became known as the Kalahari Thirstland Redemption Scheme, was rejected by most scientists. But it found support among white South Africans who worried that struggling farmers undermined an image of racial superiority.

Green Lands for White Men explores how white agriculturalists in southern Africa grappled with a parched and changing terrain as they sought to consolidate control over a black population. Meredith McKittrick’s timely history of the Redemption Scheme reveals the environment to have been central to South African understandings of race.

While Schwarz’s plan was never implemented, it enjoyed suffi cient support to prompt government research into its feasibility, and years of debate. McKittrick shows how white farmers rallied around a plan that represented their interests over those of the South African state and delves into the reasons behind this schism between expert opinion and public perception. This backlash against the predominant scientific view, McKittrick argues, displayed the depth of popular mistrust in an expanding scientific elite.

A detailed look at the intersection of a settler society, climate change, white nationalism, and expert credibility, Green Lands for White Men examines the reverberations of a scheme that ultimately failed but influenced ideas about race and the environment in South Africa for decades to come.

Although the problem of controlling the spread of exotic invasive plant and animal species in the United States has been recognized for quite some time, it has been lacking an adequate legislative mandate, public awareness, and sufficient funding to meet the challenge. This ACS Symposium Series title showcases the many diverse efforts being made to control invasive species at the federal, state, and local levels. It recognizes the global extent of the problem and compares the methods used in other countries with those of the U.S., and includes recommendations of how best to proceed from here.

ISO 14001 is the new international standard for environmental management systems. But what difference will it make to the environmental performance of companies that receive it? Will it do anything to further sustainable industrial development? This edition seeks to argue that it will not and further that it does not have a legitimate practice in discussions of sustainable industrial development.;The authors point to a massive democratic deficit in the process of establishing the standard in which small and medium-size enterprises, developing country officals, public opinion and environmental groups may have trouble participating. They aim to argue that this has put up barriers to the full participation of these parties. Moreover, they seek to describe how the standard reverses the trend for firms to innovate to meet the challenge of sustainability.

Water scarcity is the next big climate crisis. Water stress – not just scarcity, but also water-quality issues caused by pollution – is already driving the first waves of climate refugees. Rivers are drying out before they meet the oceans, and ancient lakes are disappearing. Fourteen of the world’s twenty megacities are now experiencing water scarcity or drought conditions. It’s increasingly clear that human mismanagement of water is dangerously unsustainable, for both ecological and human survival. And yet in recent years some key countries have been quietly and very successfully addressing water stress. How are Singapore and Israel, for example – both severely water-stressed countries – not in the same predicament as Chennai or California, but now boast surplus water? What can we learn from them and how can we use this knowledge to turn things around for the wider global community? Do we have to stop eating almonds and asparagus grown in the deserts of California and Peru? Could desalination of seawater be the answer? Or rainwater capture? Are some of the wilder ‘solutions’ – such as the plan to tow icebergs to Cape Town – pure madness, or necessary innovation? Award-winning environmental journalist Tim Smedley will travel the world to meet the experts, the victims, the activists and pioneers, to find out how we can mend the water table that our survival depends upon. His book will take an unblinking look at the current situation and how we got there. And then look to the solutions. The Last Drop promises to offer a fascinating, universally relevant account of the environmental and human factors that have led us to this point, and suggests practical ways in which we might address the crisis, before it’s too late.

New institutions don't come into being by themselves: They have to be organized. On the basis of research from a decade-long, multi-site study of efforts to transform freshwater management in Brazil, Practical Authority asks how new institutional arrangements established by law become operational in practice. The book explores how this happens by putting both agency and structures in motion. It looks at what actors in complex policy environments actually do to get new institutions off the ground. New configurations of authority in a policy area very often have to be produced relationally, on the ground, in practice. New organizations have to acquire problem-solving capabilities and recognition from others, what the authors call "practical authority." The story told here has a multiplicity of protagonists, many of whom are normally invisible in political studies, such as the state officials and university professors who struggled to move water reform forward. The book explores the interaction between their efforts to influence the design and passage of new legislation and the hard labor of creating the new water management organizations the laws called for. It follows three decades of law making at the national and state level and examines the creation of sixteen river basin committees throughout the country. By bringing together state and society actors around territorially specific problems, these committees were expected to promote a new vision of integrated water management. But none of the ones examined here followed the trajectory their organizers expected. Some adapted creatively to challenges, circumventing roadblocks encountered along the way; others never got off the ground. Rather than explain these differences on the basis of the varying conditions actors faced, the authors propose a focus on the process, and practice, of institution building.

Megadrought and Collapse is the first book to treat in one volume the current paleoclimatic and archaeological evidence of megadrought events coincident with major historical examples of societal collapse. Previous works have offered multi-causal explanations for climate change, from overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, and warfare to poor leadership and failure to adapt to environmental changes. In earlier synthetic studies of major instances of collapse, the archaeological record has often not been considered. Included in this volume are nine case studies that span the globe and stretch over fourteen thousand years, from the paleolithic hunter-gatherer collapse of the 12th millennium BC to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer capital at Angkor. Together, the studies constitute a primary sourcebook in which principal investigators in archaeology and paleoclimatology present their original research. Each case study juxtaposes the latest paleoclimatic evidence of a megadrought (so-called for its severity and its decades to centuries-long duration) with available archaeological records of synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from all five archival paleoclimate proxy sources: lake, marine, and glacial cores, speleothems (cave stalagmites), and tree rings. The archaeological records in each case are the most recently retrieved. The editor derives two arguments from the discussions in the volume: (1) Societal collapse would not have occurred without megadrought. Attendant social disruptions may have been present in some instances. Nonetheless, megadrought rendered agriculture-based societies unsustainable in different regions, periods, and levels of social complexity, from simple foraging to vast empires. (2) A set of adaptive responses can be observed across the nine cases: adaptive collapse in the face of insurmountable megadrought, region-wide and settlement abandonment, and habitat tracking to sustainable agricultural environments. The evidence points to a paradigm shift: the insertion of another major force, natural climate variability-megadrought-into the global historical record.

This text is a synthesis of research in production and management since the inception of the discipline as an agricultural science in the 1930s. All the ecological regions are covered extensively, but the main emphasis is on the three biomes (grassland, savanna and karoo) which produce the bulk of the forage supporting the domestic livestock, conservation and the game farming industries. The book has an audience beyond the borders of South Africa in the grassland and savanna areas which stretch through southern and central Africa.;The text is aimed at students concerned with the management of natural ecosystems and also livestock producers and game ranchers who rely on the veld to feed their animals. The text throughout emphasizes the interpretation and application of research results to the practical situation.;All major aspects of veld production and management are covered in this book. It outlines the physiological and ecological principles on which management is based and which underpin the science. The book presents management options based on these underlying principles before dealing with recommended management procedures in each of the main ecological regions of the country.;The contributions to this book collectively represent a component of the expertise available on issues related to veld management in South Africa. They are veld and animal production researchers, conservation managers and planners working both at a practical level, closely in touch with livestock and game farmers, and at the more theoretical level as teachers at colleges and universities.

Providing an extensive comparative and international study of water innovations and the issues that arise in their implementation, David Lewis Feldman analyses the technical, economic, health and environmental impacts of water innovations and their policy implications. Discussing desalination, rainwater harvesting, wastewater reuse, and demand-side innovations as well as emerging cyber-infrastructure issues, The Governance of Water Innovations analyses the historical and contemporary challenges involved in water innovations. With a global reach, exploring water innovations across The Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe, chapters consider potential areas of contention involving land use, aesthetics, recreational impacts, user costs, and environmental quality. Illuminating the importance of these challenges and determining the most effective and equitable ways of meeting them, Feldman advises how innovations should be deployed, governed and implemented democratically in ways that harbour public acceptance, trust, and engagement for a water resilient future. A comprehensive study of the governance of water innovations, this book will prove invaluable to students and scholars of public policy, environmental and water studies and geopolitics. With its pioneering analysis of adaptive governance, it will also prove an essential reference guide to practitioners, professionals and policymakers working in water governance and management, including water agency officials and water resource legislators.

This book addresses the diverse ways in which international law governs the uses, management, and protection of fresh water. The international law of fresh water is most comprehensively understood in the light of the different bodies of norms applicable to these varied uses and functions. The regulation of fresh water has primarily developed through the conclusion of treaties concerning international watercourses. Yet a number of other legal regimes also apply to the governance of fresh water. In particular, there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of fresh water to environmental protection. The development of international human rights law and international humanitarian law has also proven crucial for ensuring the sound and equitable management of this resource. In addition, the economic uses of fresh water feature prominently in the law applicable to watercourses, while water itself has become an important element of the trade and investment regimes. These bodies of rules and principles not only surface in an array of dispute settlement mechanisms, but also stimulate wider trends of institutionalization. The book investigates the origin and scope of these bodies of norms as they apply to fresh water, and demonstrates how they connect and adapt to one another, forming an integrated body of international principles. This approach is accompanied by a detailed analysis of the practice of states and of international organizations, taking into account the activities of the many non-state actors involved in the treatment of fresh water.

This Modern Guide provides detailed theoretical and empirical insights into key areas of research in food economics. It takes a forward-looking perspective on how different actors in the food system shape the sustainability of food production, distribution, and consumption, as well as on major challenges to efficient and inclusive food systems. Analysing the main characteristics of modern food markets, chapters introduce readers to the economics of food systems, product differentiation, the mediating role of food retailers, and the increasing significance and complexity of international trade in food. Encapsulating new methods in the study of food economics and policy, this Modern Guide explores changes in food value chains and consumption. It further pushes the boundaries of food economics to include economic perspectives on the role of social media and technology such as genomics in shaping food systems. Offering key insights into the state-of-the-art debates in the field, this Modern Guide will be critical reading for graduate students and researchers of food economics. It will also be a timely book for practitioners in the field wishing to take a fresh look at issues shaping food systems.

Renewable energy technologies produce many measurable benefits, such as a clear reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. However, it is also apparent that these methods of energy production come with costs. Discussing renewable energy developments within an economic context, this pertinent Handbook provides a comprehensive view of the present and future dimensions of renewable energy use. Divided into six authoritative parts, the Handbook employs economic evaluation to provide an analysis of the benefits and costs of renewable energy, allowing authors to extrapolate potential policy changes. Chapters address the conceptual, methodological and empirical dimensions of renewable energy, providing a broad coverage of key topics while maintaining a clear policy-oriented philosophy. With a structured application of energy economics to renewable energy issues, this enlightening Handbook will be beneficial for environmental and energy policy makers. It will also be an interesting read for academics within such fields as policy regulation, energy economics and environmental economics.

The world food situation is deteriorating. Grain stocks have dropped to a dangerously low level. The World Food Price Index has doubled in one decade. The ranks of the hungry are expanding; political unrest is spreading. On the demand side of the food equation, there will be 219,000 people at the dinner table tonight who were not there last night. And some 3 billion increasingly affluent people are moving up the food chain, consuming grain-intensive livestock and poultry products. At the same time, water shortages and heat waves are making it more difficult for farmers to keep pace with demand. As grain-exporting countries ban exports to keep their food prices down, importing countries are panicking. In response, they are buying large tracts of land in other countries to grow food for themselves. The land rush is on. Could food become the weak link for us as it was for so many earlier civilizations? Lester Brown, one of the leading environmentalists of our time, explains why world food supplies are tightening and tells what we need to do about it.

Groundwater amounts to 97% of available global freshwater resources. Emphasising the crucial importance of this in the context of increasing population, climate change and the overall global water crisis, Francesco Sindico offers a comprehensive study of the emerging body of international law applicable to transboundary aquifers. Adopting a scenario-based approach, this much-needed book analyses a diverse set of transboundary aquifer agreements and arrangements. With just a handful of such agreements and arrangements around the world, it demonstrates how identifying a normative roadmap for countries that want to begin jointly managing a transboundary aquifer is of paramount importance. Offering an in-depth exploration into the ILC Draft Articles on the Law of Transboundary Aquifers, it provides insight into how this body of law is evolving, and discusses its relation to customary international law. Academics and researchers interested in international water law, environmental law and public international law more widely will find this a unique and compelling work, whilst the book’s practical approach will also make it a useful tool for transboundary aquifer professionals and wider stakeholders working in governments and public bodies dealing with water management around the world.