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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Management of land & natural resources
With growing concern about the oceans and the resources of this realm has come a proliferation of international and national efforts aimed at protecting this environment. This volume constitutes the initial effort to reflect on the outcomes associated with the third Law of the Sea Conference and to assess how the reforms and changes brought on by this conference have performed. The establishment of 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZa (TM)s) constitutes one of the most far-reaching distributional and institutional changes in the history of the world. They brought over 20 % of the worlda (TM)s oceans, a substantial proportion of its productivity, and 90 to 95 % of world fisheries under the national jurisdiction of coastal states. At this time, 145 states have ratified the Law of the Sea Convention and most have established EEZs. Some have established only a legal framework, while other countries have elaborated EEZ regimes. This volume focuses on the specific nature of the EEZ and the construction and evolution of institutions stemming from its introduction, specifically examining developments at local, national and international levels. The analytical core of the volume focuses on the development of institutional arrangements for the management of living marine resources, occurring at different levels of social organization, that have developed from the introduction of the EEZs. The chapters cover case studies from both the north and south, in the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. The case studies critically examine the impact of the EEZ regime on institutions at local, national, regional and international levels of social organization. The broad range of contributions by theauthors highlights the diversity of institutions and outcomes that have emerged from the implementation of the EEZs, providing a rich opportunity for comparative analysis. By doing so, we seek to address three broad questions: -What is the nature of the institutions that coastal states have
created within the framework provided by the EEZs?
Beyond the Biophysical provides a broad overview of agriculture and natural resource management (NRM) scholarship and practice that lies beyond the biophysical, emphasizing instead epistemological, cultural, and political foundations of NRM. The volume is oriented toward professionals with expertise in agriculture and natural resource management scholarship and practice, but who lack exposure to the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of critical theory, the anthropology of development, ecological anthropology, and other relevant scholarship. It therefore follows common standards of academic rigour, but minimizes the use of jargon, integrates detailed case studies with conceptual syntheses, and attempts to move from critique to concrete recommendations for scholarship and practice. The volume seeks to foster a more nuanced and responsible engagement with local communities and the natural world among NRM scholars and practitioners.
Presenting critical insights on how economic activity is constrained by the environment's ability to provide material and energy resources, this timely Research Agenda explores how humanity shapes, and is shaped by, environmental change and sustainability challenges. Chapters highlight how, under these constraints, people may seek to improve their lives and standards of living without undermining the abilities of others to do so now or in the future. With contributions from top economic scholars, as well as from a range of other disciplines including ethics, law, and the physical and life sciences, this book explores how interdisciplinary insights can be integrated to provide meaningful investment and policy advice. Offering diverse understandings of the topic from both the Global North and South, this Research Agenda challenges previous economic conceptualizations of human-environment interactions, exploring resource use and environmental impact from micro- and macro-economic perspectives. Students of environmental and ecological economics will find this to be a thought-provoking and stimulating read. The suggestions for future research and use of clear case studies will also prove valuable for environmental law and ethics scholars, as well as environmental policy-makers. Contributors include: D.C. Andersen, Y. Bramoulle, L.P. Breckenridge, M. Faber, M. Frick, A. Kander, R. Kemp, D. Malghan, R.B. Norgaard, C. Orset, S.V. Ramani, M. Ruth, J. Sager, M. Sagoff, M.R. Sers, D.I. Stern, D.J. Thampapillai, E. van Leeuwen, M.d.M.R. Varas, P.A. Victor
For a long time, resource conservationists have viewed environmental conservation as synonymous with wilderness and wildlife resources only, oblivious to the contributions made by cultural and heritage resources. However, cultural heritage resources in many parts of the developing world are gradually becoming key in social (e.g. communities' identities and museums), economic (heritage tourism and eco-tourism), educational (curriculum development), civic (intergenerational awareness), and international resources management (e.g. UNESCO). In universities, African cultural heritage resources are facing a challenge of being brought into various academic discourses and syllabi in a rather reactive and/or haphazard approach, resulting in failure to fully address and research these resources' conservation needs to ensure that their use in multiple platforms and by various stakeholders is sustainable. This book seeks to place African cultural heritage studies and conservation practices within an international and modern world discourse of conservation by presenting its varied themes and topics that are important for the development of the wider field of cultural heritage studies and management.
Mitigation will not be sufficient for us to avoid climate change and we will need to adapt to its consequences. This book targets the development of adaptation policy in European countries with different relations between central and regional/local government.
This book presents a comprehensive survey about the most recent developments in industrial applications, processing techniques and modifications of polymers from marine sources. It systematically introduces the reader to the biomaterials Chitin, Collagen, Alginates, Cellulose and Polyesters and links their interwoven industrial significance and environmental implications. The book elucidates the impact of industrial sourcing of the aquatic system for organic and inorganic matter on the environment and deepens the understanding of the industrial and economic significance of aquatic biopolymers. Further it addresses the question of how to balance the conservation of aquatic life and the industrial and economic interest in developing biodegradable alternatives for plastic. Thus the book will appeal to scientists in the field of chemistry, materials and polymer science as well as engineering.
This is the work of a man who has known and loved the Scottish Cairngorms for more than 30 years. Jim Crumley marries a poet's instincts to an uncompromising passion for the Cairngorm's arctic character, and for those wildlife tribes which thrive there. He marks nature's rhythms with thoughtful observations of bird and beast, flower and landscape. In the process he strives for a purer empathy with the wilds, seeks out the nourishing bond of man and landscape. Ultimately, the book asserts that the Cairngorms are nature's place. Crumley proposes a radical solution to safeguard the mountains from a threatening array of forces ranged against them. In his conclusion he invokes what Seton Gordon called "the spirit of the high and lonely places".
This landmark study is the result of a collaborative research effort among the East-West Center and a group of institutions in China (Taipei), Japan, and Korea, in consultation with experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Electric Power Research Institute of California. The first project of its kind to mobilize senior power experts in the three major countries of Northeast Asia for cooperative electric future assessment, Electricity in Economic Development highlights the critical role of the electric power sector in influencing a nation's future industrial development and its energy supply-demand pattern in the post-oil-crisis era.
The present work will discuss relevant theoretical frameworks and applications pertaining to enabling resilience within the risk, crisis and disaster management domain. The contributions to this book focus on resilience thinking along 4 broad themes: Urban Domain; Cyber Domain; Organizational/Social domain; and Socio-ecological domain. This book would serve as a valuable reference for courses on risk, crisis and disaster management, international development, social innovation and resilience. This will be of particular interest to those working in the risk, crisis and disaster management domain as it will provide valuable insights into enabling resilience. This book will be well positioned to inform disaster management professionals, policy makers and academics on strategies and perspectives regarding disaster resilience.
More than 2.6 billion people in the developing world lack access to safe water and sanitation service. The Millennium Development Goal's (MDG) target is to halve the number of people without access to a sustainable source of water supply and connection to a sewer network by 2015. That target is unlikely to be met. If there is anything that can be learnt from European experience it is that institutional reform occurs incrementally when politically enfranchised urban populations perceive a threat to their material well-being due to contamination of water sources.
This second volume is the work of more than 55 authors from 15 different disciplines and includes complex systems science which studies the viability of components, and also the study of empirical situations. As readers will discover, the coviability of social and ecological systems is based on the contradiction between humanity, which adopts finalized objectives, and the biosphere, which refers to a ecological functions. We see how concrete situations shed light on the coviability's determinants, and in this book the very nature of the coviability, presented as a concept-paradigm, is defined in a transversal and ontological ways. By adopting a systemic approach, without advocating any economic dogma (such as development) or dichotomizing between humans and nature, while emphasizing what is relevant to humans and what is not, this work neutrally contextualizes man's place in the biosphere. It offers a new mode of thinking and positioning of the ecological imperative, and will appeal to all those working with social and ecological systems.
We developed the first edition of this book because we perceived a need for a compilation on study design with application to studies of the ecology, conser- tion, and management of wildlife. We felt that the need for coverage of study design in one source was strong, and although a few books and monographs existed on some of the topics that we covered, no single work attempted to synthesize the many facets of wildlife study design. We decided to develop this second edition because our original goal - synthesis of study design - remains strong, and because we each gathered a substantial body of new material with which we could update and expand each chapter. Several of us also used the first edition as the basis for workshops and graduate teaching, which provided us with many valuable suggestions from readers on how to improve the text. In particular, Morrison received a detailed review from the graduate s- dents in his "Wildlife Study Design" course at Texas A&M University. We also paid heed to the reviews of the first edition that appeared in the literature.
The dilemma facing Cyprus--that of limited water supplies (both in terms of quantity and quality) in the face of steadily increasing water demand, coupled with a fragmented institutional structure of the water sector--is characteristic of most arid and semi-arid countries all over the world. Another common characteristic of Cyprus is that the water management administrative boundaries there do not coincide with the hydrological ones, while the ongoing political problem of the island creates significant administration problems.
Geotechnologies and the Environment: Environmental Applications and Mana- ment presents an engaging and diverse array of physically-oriented GIScience applications that have been organized using four broad themes. While the book's themes are by no means mutually exclusive, Hoalst-Pullen and Patterson provide an elegant overview of the eld that frames the collection's subsequent thematic str- ture - Wilderness and Wildlife Response; Glaciers; Wetlands and Watersheds; and Human Health and the Environment. Over the course of the volume, the contrib- ing authors move beyond basic (and in some respects cliched) landscape ecology of land use change to explore human-environment dynamics heretofore not emp- sized in the applied literature. In doing so, the collection presents a compelling case for the importance of developing new physically-oriented GIScience applications that reside at the nexus of social and natural systems with the explicit intent of informing public policy and/or the decision making practices of resource managers. Individually, the chapters themselves are intentionally diverse. The diversity of the approaches, their spatial context, and emphases on management applications demonstrate the many ways in which geotechnologies can be used to address small and big problems in both developed and developing regions. The collection's int- nal coherence is derived - like the book series - from its explicit appeal to a wide variety of human-environment interactions with potential policy linkages.
This book addresses the enormous global challenge of providing balanced and sustainable solutions to urgent water problems. The author explores our dependence on access to safe water and other water-related services and how driving forces of the human and natural worlds are degrading this access. The greatest challenges involve conflicts between people and interest groups across all countries, as well as the economic and political difficulties in finding solutions through infrastructure development. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach to Integrated Water Resources Management or IWRM, which provides a set of tools for policy development, planning and organization, assessment, systems analysis, finance, and regulation. The author suggests that IWRM is challenging because of the human element, but that no other process can reconcile the conflicting agendas involved with water management. The broad range of topics covered here, as well as 25 case summaries, will be of interest to scientists, engineers, practitioners, and advanced level students interested in the integrated management of water as a resource.
The book provides a comprehensive overview of the hydrology of the Nile River, especially the ecohydrological degradation and challenges the basin is facing, the impact of climate change on water availability and the transboundary water management issues. The book includes analysis and approaches that will help provide different insights into the hydrology of this complex basin, which covers 11 countries and is home to over 300 million people. The need for water-sharing agreements that reflect the current situations of riparian countries and are based on equitable water- sharing principles is stressed in many chapters.This book explores water resource availability and quality and their trends in the basin, soil erosion and watershed degradation at different scales, water and health, land use and climate change impact, transboundary issues and water management, dams, reservoirs and lakes. The link between watershed and river water quantity and quality is discussed pointing out the importance of watershed protection for better water resource management, water accessibility, institutional set-up and policy, water demand and management. The book also presents the water sharing sticking points in relation to historical treaties and the emerging water demands of the upstream riparian countries. The need for collaboration and identification of common ground to resolve the transboundary water management issues and secure a win-win is also indicated. "
Many people working toward sustainability recognize the important role of conservation but are inadequately prepared to deal with the large spatial, temporal and complexity scales that are involved in large-scale conservation efforts. Problems in large-scale conservation require navigating an intermixture of geophysical, biological and political dimensions. Coming to grips with these many natural and human forces and factors at large scales, much less the myriad details in any single case, is challenging in the extreme and becomes more critical with each day that passes. Large-scale conservation poses many complex challenges that single disciplines, approaches or methods cannot fully address alone. Interdisciplinarity can significantly strengthen large-scale conservation efforts. Throughout Large-Scale Conservation in the Common Interest the editors and authors argue that a more holistic and genuinely interdisciplinary approach is required to solve the complex and growing challenges associated with large-scale conservation. The chapters within offer such an approach and define key terms, bring challenges to light and employ case studies to offer concrete practical and strategic recommendations to help those who are engaged in the interactive tasks of promoting sustainability and human dignity. This book is intended for a broad audience, including students and professors new to the field of large-scale conservation, experienced field-based practitioners in science and management and decision and policy makers who set specific and strategic direction for large landscapes. Professors can use this book to introduce students to the challenges of successful large-scale conservation design and implementation and to teach interdisciplinarity as a framework, concept and tool. Professionals will find this book offers a new way of using science, management and policy to make decisions. Finally, this volume can be used as a guide to set up workshops, seminars, or projects involving diverse people and perspectives.
How do we achieve food security for a global population now over 7 billion people and trending towards 10 billion by 2050? This study of the global dairy industry examines how to balance our needs with those of animals and the environment. It scrutinises ruminant bovines' worrying exhaling of methane, a greenhouse gas which, fortunately, evidence shows can be reduced by adding seaweed to cattle feed. Are the multi-thousand-cow mega-dairies of the USA appropriate models for Africa and Asia's high-growth dairy regions, where so many women are smallholders? Is it ethical to keep cows in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), eating unnatural high-energy/low fibre diets when they prefer grazing pasture? Other issues include hormones for oestrus stimulation, and GMOs for milk yield, stressing cows' immune systems and drastically shortening longevity. This book offers multifaceted discussion of the central and ancillary issues relevant to dairying, and consumption of plant- and laboratory-based foods in the 21st century. No book to date offers such a comprehensive overview, linking ethics, environment, health and policy-making with in-depth coverage of the major dairy farming regions of the world.
The management of, and access to, water resources have been universally identified as a key aspect of poverty reduction, agriculture and food security and sustainable development in developing, transitional, and developed countries worldwide. Yet good "water governance," so eagerly sought, has in practice proven difficult to achieve. This book, edited and authored by leading authorities on water resource management, examines the recent changes in governance, institutions, economics, and policies of water, from a global point of view and a cross-country perspective, with special emphasis on African and Southern African case studies.The authors show that in recent years, water policies, institutions, and governance have shifted from technical, quantitative, supply-driven, centrally controlled management to more demand-sensitive, qualitative, decentralized, participatory, integrated approaches. Such a move also often supposes cost recovery principles, resource allocation among competing sectors, and privatization. In most developing countries, motivations for these changes have been increased resource scarcity, increased diversity of users and uses, urbanization, financial constraints and the need for sustainable development through renewed water management. Yet the creation and operation of new policies and legal frameworks often fall short of initial expectations since management transfer and decentralization processes, cost recovery principles and the emergence of new local organizations have proven difficult to implement. The book examines these issues through case studies at national, river basin, and local levels using accessible multidisciplinary approaches that integrate economics, institutional analysis, geography, and policy analysis. Ultimately the book untangles and presents best practices for policy and decision makers, governments and regulators, NGOs and user groups, farmers, water-supply companies, and researchers, and points towards how good water governance structures can be developed and implemented for the benefit of all.
This book provides a comprehensive discussion and analysis of global energy resources, international energy markets, international energy forecasts for the first quarter of the 21st century, conventional and alternative energy technologies and pertinent historical developments of world energy. It is organized into four parts with 27 chapters that cover advance energy technologies, primary and alternative energy resources and country profiles. Part I introduces conventional energy resources; Part II covers alternative energy sources and conservation; Part III covers energy modelling and forecast methods for anlaysing energy development in the United States of America and the world; Part IV provides a country-by-country analysis of energy issues, law, resources and programs. It is indeed an assessment of the outlook for international energy that relates to major fuels, transportation, electricity and the environment.
This book focuses on the theory and application of interdependent networks. The contributors consider the influential networks including power and energy networks, transportation networks, and social networks. The first part of the book provides the next generation sustainability framework as well as a comprehensive introduction of smart cities with special emphasis on energy, communication, data analytics and transportation. The second part offers solutions to performance and security challenges of developing interdependent networks in terms of networked control systems, scalable computation platforms, and dynamic social networks. The third part examines the role of electric vehicles in the future of sustainable interdependent networks. The fourth and last part of this volume addresses the promises of control and management techniques for the future power grids.
This book gives an overall analysis of the current knowledge status about structures, functions, utilization for German Baltic coast ecosystems. The main focus of this book is on the aquatic area, but land/sea interactions as well as river outfalls are included as well. Characteristic for this book is the inclusion of social science aspects. Approximately one third of its extent will be about the ecosystem services. In this segment the results of the last 6 years are presented in which a comprehensive quantification of the social relevance of ecosystems was carried out covering the entire area of the German Baltic Sea. This part builds directly on the results of scientific investigations and are in relation to social ideals. The assessment will not only be economically and ethically but also the mechanisms that are used for the valorisation of the ecosystem services will be evaluated. Both sub-areas, the classic natural science part as well as the part of social science aspects, deal with the changes caused by increasing anthropogenic influence and social (including demographic) changes. This will be among others in the sense of an exemplary historical outline. The final chapter of the synthesis therefore not only presents a summary of the level of knowledge gained and a deduction of the research needs. It further contains a presentation of the application aspects resulting from the analysis of the social relevance gained from basic scientific research. The book is aimed at scientists (and students) of natural, life and social sciences, analysing functioning and structures of coastal ecosystems with regard to sustainable use and nature protection, including aspects of coastal protection. Besides, it is thought to become a reference for all levels of decision makers and stakeholders in coastal and marine management of the Baltic and North Sea region, providing also a blueprint for system analysis respecting for societal as well as biological aspects world-wide.
Although numerous books have been written on both monitoring and modelling of coastal oceans, there is a practical need for an introductory multi-disciplinary volume to non-specialists in this field. The articles commisioned for this book, organized into four major themes, are written by experts in their disciplines while the text is intended for scientists who do not have extensive training in marine sciences and coastal zone management. As such, the articles in this monograph can be a valuable reference for practicing professionals. The first section introduces the complex physical processes with main emphasis on waste disposal in the coastal ocean. Following this, examples of instrumentation techniques that are commonly used for measuring different properties of oceans are discribed. Coastal and estuarine transport and dispersion modelling is introduced in the next section with examples from different parts of the world. The last section provides an overview of coastal disasters such as tropical cyclones, storm surges and oil spills.
The Green Revolution has been heralded as a political and technological achievement -- unprecedented in human history. Yet in the decades that have followed it, this supposedly nonviolent revolution has left lands ravaged by violence and ecological scarcity. A dedicated empiricist, Vandana Shiva takes a magnifying glass to the effects of the Green Revolution in India, examining the devastating effects of monoculture and commercial agriculture and revealing the nuanced relationship between ecological destruction and poverty. In this classic work, the influential activist and scholar also looks to the future as she examines new developments in gene technology. |
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