International experts have contributed key chapters to this major work on groundwater contamination. Section 1: Methodology and Modeling deals with both organic and inorganic contaminants, including those from agricultural operations. Section 2: Case Studies presents contamination scenarios with both inorganic and organic chemicals including agriculturally-related constituents, such as the nitrates. This important new publication is a welcome addition to the literature and will enhance recent information on methodology, modeling and real-world situations. It is of interest to scientists and planners in local and national government; environmental chemists, geochemists, geologists, and health and safety officers; river authorities; hydrologists; and the mining and land reclamation industries.

This book is a result of the authors' more than 40 years of study on the behavior, populations, and heavy metals in the colonial waterbirds nesting in Barnegat Bay and the nearby estuaries and bays in the Northeastern United States. From Boston Harbor to the Chesapeake, based on longitudinal studies of colonial waterbirds, it provides a clear picture of the toxic trends and effects of heavy metals in the aquatic environment. The authors take a food web, ecosystem approach to contaminants, using population dynamics, habitat selection, and inputs to the bay to examine metal levels. They also look at the human dimension, discuss what metals in birds tell us about human exposure, and describe stakeholder involvement in these issues. The book covers numbers and dynamics, colony sites and locations, and prey contaminant levels, and compares them to other comparable coastal estuaries. It uses colonial waterbirds as the focal point for an ecosystem approach to metals that begins with prey fish and goes through invertebrates to humans. Additionally, it provides information based on long-term integrative studies the authors have done on metal levels and bird species and compares the findings with data from the Harbor Estuaries Program, other Northeast bays, the Great Lakes, and the Wadden Sea.

Climate change is expected to modify the hydrological cycle and affect freshwater resources. Groundwater is a critical source of fresh drinking water for almost half of the world's population and it also supplies irrigated agriculture. Groundwater is also important in sustaining streams, lakes, wetlands, and associated ecosystems. But despite this, knowledge about the impact of climate change on groundwater quantity and quality is limited. Direct impacts of climate change on natural processes (groundwater recharge, discharge, storage, saltwater intrusion, biogeochemical reactions, chemical fate and transport) may be exacerbated by human activities (indirect impacts). Increased groundwater abstraction, for example, may be needed in areas with unsustainable or contaminated surface water resources caused by droughts and floods. Climate change effects on groundwater resources are, therefore, closely linked to other global change drivers, including population growth, urbanization and land-use change, coupled with other socio-economic and political trends. Groundwater response to global changes is a complex function that depends on climate change and variability, topography, aquifer characteristics, vegetation dynamics, and human activities. This volume contains case studies from diverse aquifer systems, scientific methods, and climatic settings that have been conducted globally under the framework of the UNESCO-IHP project Groundwater Resources Assessment under the Pressures of Humanity and Climate Change (GRAPHIC). This book presents a current and global synthesis of scientific findings and policy recommendations for scientists, water managers and policy makers towards adaptive management of groundwater sustainability under future climate change and variability.

This text provides approaches and methodologies for implementing pollution prevention (P2) and waste minimization programmes to reduce manufacturing operational costs significantly. It focuses on reducing manufacturing and environmental compliance costs by instituting feedstock substitution, improved operational schemes, recycling and by-product recovery, waste minimization, and energy efficiency policies, and offers project cost accounting tools that assist in evaluating money-saving P2 options.

The Classic Maya civilization, which thrived between 200-950 CE in eastern Mesoamerica, faced many environmental challenges, including those wrought by climate change. The ability of Maya communities to adapt their resource conservation practices played a crucial role in allowing them to survive for as long as they did. Researchers today understand that the breakdown of Classic Maya society was the result of many long-term processes. Yet the story that continues to grip the public imagination is that the Maya civilization mysteriously "collapsed". The Maya and Climate Change draws on archaeological, environmental, and historical datasets to provide a comprehensive, yet accessible, overview of Classic Maya human-environment relationships, including how communities addressed the challenges of climatic and demographic changes. It works to shift the focus from the Classic Maya "collapse" to the multiple examples of adaptive flexibility that allowed Pre-Colonial Maya communities to thrive in a challenging natural environment for over seven centuries. Although the Classic Maya civilization did not leave behind much in the way of secret environmental knowledge for us to rediscover, one of the critical lessons that can be learned from studying the Classic Maya is the importance of socio-ecological adaptability-the ability and willingness to change cultural practices to address long-term challenges.

This book investigates the relationship between non-state actors and climate justice from a philosophical perspective. The climate justice literature remains largely focused upon the rights and duties of states. Yet, for decades, states have failed to take adequate steps to address climate change. This has led some to suggest that, if severe climate change and its attendant harms are to be avoided, non-state actors are going to have to step into the breach. This collection represents the first attempt to systematically examine the climate duties of the most significant non-state actors - corporations, sub-national political communities, and individuals. Targeted at academic philosophers working on climate justice, this collection will also be of great interest to students and scholars of global justice, applied ethics, political philosophy and environmental humanities.

Emission trading schemes have become instruments of choice in climate change policy across many jurisdictions, and this has led to massive experimentation across very different contexts. The scale and urgency of the climate change problem and the real-life complexity of emission trading schemes combine to make high quality, detailed studies necessary, important, and sometimes fascinating. This book scores on all these fronts. By putting practical implementations within a sound theoretical framework, it will be of value both for seasoned and not so seasoned scholars and policymakers.' - Javier de Cendra de Larragan, IE Law School, SpainEmissions trading is becoming an increasingly popular policy instrument with growing diversity in design. This book examines emissions trading design, emissions trading implementation problems and how to address them. In an easily accessible way, the book examines advantages and disadvantages of emissions trading and presents policy considerations that designers should not neglect. Stefan Weishaar reviews the main implementation challenges emissions trading faces and assesses how they can be addressed in an effective, efficient and acceptable way. By reviewing existing and emerging emissions trading systems around the world, the book describes why emissions trading systems are used in an environmental policy mix, how an emissions trading system can be designed, what special design issues should be duly considered, and with whom emissions trading systems can be linked. Written from both a legal and an economic perspective, this book will appeal to academic researchers and postgraduate students in environmental law and policy, and those focused on energy and climate change issues. It will also be essential reading for policymakers, managers and consultants working in this field. Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Emission Trading and Alternative Instruments 3. Design Variants of Emissions Trading 4. Real-life Applications of Emissions Trading Systems 5. Implementation Issue 1: Initial Allocation of Emission Rights 6. Implementation Issues 2: Secondary Market for Emissions Rights 7. Implementation Issue 3: Operational Aspects of Emission Rights 8. Implementation Issue 4: Lawsuits Following from Emissions Trading 9. Linking Emissions Trading Schemes 10. Concluding Remarks References Index

Shows the risks of high-tech pollution through a study of an IBM plant's effects on a New York town In 1924, IBM built its first plant in Endicott, New York. Now, Endicott is a contested toxic waste site. With its landscape thoroughly contaminated by carcinogens, Endicott is the subject of one of the nation's largest corporate-state mitigation efforts. Yet despite the efforts of IBM and the U.S. government, Endicott residents remain skeptical that the mitigation systems employed were designed with their best interests at heart. In Toxic Town, Peter C. Little tracks and critically diagnoses the experiences of Endicott residents as they learn to live with high-tech pollution, community transformation, scientific expertise, corporate-state power, and risk mitigation technologies. By weaving together the insights of anthropology, political ecology, disaster studies, and science and technology studies, the book explores questions of theoretical and practical import for understanding the politics of risk and the ironies of technological disaster response in a time when IBM's stated mission is to build a "Smarter Planet." Little critically reflects on IBM's new corporate tagline, arguing for a political ecology of corporate social and environmental responsibility and accountability that places the social and environmental politics of risk mitigation front and center. Ultimately, Little argues that we will need much more than hollow corporate taglines, claims of corporate responsibility, and attempts to mitigate high-tech disasters to truly build a smarter planet.

Every day we are inundated by propaganda that claims life will be better once we are connected to digital technology. Poverty, famine, and injustice will end, and the economy will be "green." All anyone needs is the latest smartphone. In this succinct and lively book, Maxwell and Miller take a critical look at contemporary gadgets and the systems that connect them, shedding light on environmental risks. Contrary to widespread claims, consumer electronics and other digital technologies are made in ways that cause some of the worst environmental disasters of our time - conflict-minerals extraction, fatal and life-threatening occupational hazards, toxic pollution of ecosystems, rising energy consumption linked to increased carbon emissions, and e-waste. Nonetheless, a greener future is possible, in which technology meets its emancipatory and progressive potential. How Green is Your Smartphone? encourages us to look at our phones in a wholly new way, and is important reading for anyone concerned by the impact of everyday technologies on our environment.

In the field of 'climate change', no terrain goes uncontested. The terminological tug of war between activists and corporations, scientists and governments, has seen radical notions of 'sustainability' emptied of urgency and subordinated to the interests of capital. 'Just Transition' is the latest such battleground, and the conceptual keystone of the post-COP21 climate policy world. But what does it really mean? Just Transition emerged as a framework developed within the trade union movement to encompass a range of social interventions needed to secure workers' and frontline communities' jobs and livelihoods as economies shift to sustainable production. Just Transitions draws on a range of perspectives from the global North and South to interrogate the overlaps, synergies and tensions between various understandings of the Just Transition approach. As the concept is entering the mainstream, has it lost its radical edge, and if so, can it be recovered? Written by academics and activists from around the globe, this unique edited collection is the first book entirely devoted to Just Transition.

Urban communities around the world face increased stress from natural disasters linked to climate change, and other urban pressures. They need to grow rapidly stronger in order to cope, adapt and flourish. Strong social networks and social cohesion can be more important for a community's resilience than the actual physical structures of a city. But how can urban planning and design support these critical collective social strengths? This book offers blue sky thinking from the applied social and behavioural sciences, and urban planning. It looks at case studies from 14 countries around the world - including India, the USA, South Africa, Indonesia, the UK and New Zealand - focusing on initiatives for housing, public space and transport stops, and also natural disasters such as flooding and earthquakes. Building on these insights, the authors propose a 'gold standard': a socially aware planning process and policy recommendation for those drawing up city sustainability and climate change resilience strategies, and urban developers looking to build climate-proof infrastructure and spaces. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of urban studies, resilience studies and climate change policy, as well as policymakers and practitioners working in related fields.

When the world began to wake up to the global environmental crisis in the 1970s, the United States was the undisputed world leader in environmental policy. Yet, on an unsettling number of international environmental issues including global warming the U.S. has not only forfeited its leadership role but has too often become the major barrier to protecting the global environment. In American Heat, Donald Brown critically analyzes the U.S. response to global warming, inviting readers to examine the implicit morality of the U.S position, and ultimately to help lead the world toward an equitable sharing of the burdens and benefits of protecting the global environment. In short, Brown argues that an ethical focus on global environmental matters is the key to achieving a globally acceptable solution.

This unique study of social harm offers a systematic and critical discussion of the nature of environmental harm from an eco-justice perspective, challenging conventional criminological definitions of environmental harm. The book evaluates three interconnected justice-related approaches to environmental harm: environmental justice (humans), ecological justice (the environment) and species justice (non-human animals). It provides a critical assessment of environmental harm by interrogating key concepts and exploring how activists and social movements engage in the pursuit of justice. It concludes by describing the tensions between the different approaches and the importance of developing an eco-justice framework that to some extent can reconcile these differences. Using empirical evidence built on theoretical foundations with examples and illustrations from many national contexts, `Environmental harm' will be of interest to students and academics in criminology, sociology, law, geography, environmental studies, philosophy and social policy all over the world.

Climate change has become the most pressing moral and political problem of our time. Ethical theories help us think clearly and more fully about important moral and political issues. And yet, to date, there have been no books that have brought together a broad range of ethical theories to apply them systematically to the problems of climate change. This volume fills that deep need. Two preliminary chapters-an up-to-date synopsis of climate science and an overview of the ethical issues raised by climate change-set the stage. After this, ten leading ethicists in ten separate chapters each present a major ethical theory (or, more broadly, perspective) and discuss the implications of that view for how we decide to respond to a rapidly warming planet. Each chapter first provides a brief exposition of the view before working out what that theory "has to say" about climate change and our response to the problems it poses. Key features: * Up-to-date synopsis of climate science * Clear overviews of a wide range of ethical theories and perspectives by leading experts * Insightful discussions of the implications of these theories and perspectives for our response to climate change * A unique opportunity to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of various ethical viewpoints.

This book brings together the voices of people from five continents who live, work, and research on the front lines of climate resistance and renewal. The many contributors to this volume explore the impacts of extreme weather events in Africa, the Caribbean and on Pacific islands, experiences of life-long defenders of the land and forests in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and eastern Canada, and efforts to halt the expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure from North America to South Africa. They offer various perspectives on how a just transition toward a fossil-free economy can take shape, as they share efforts to protect water resources, better feed their communities, and implement new approaches to urban policy and energy democracy. Climate Justice and Community Renewal uniquely highlights the accounts of people who are directly engaged in local climate struggles and community renewal efforts, including on-the-ground land defenders, community organizers, leaders of international campaigns, agroecologists, activist-scholars, and many others. It will appeal to students, researchers, activists, and all who appreciate the need for a truly justice-centered response to escalating climate disruptions.

Proceedings of the 48th Session of the International Seminars on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies held in Erice, Sicily. This Seminar has again gathered, in 2015, over one hundred scientists from 43 countries in an interdisciplinary effort that has been going on for the last 32 years, to examine and analyze planetary problems which had been followed up, all year long, by the World Federation of Scientists' Permanent Monitoring Panels.

This book highlights best practices in climate change education through the analysis of a rich collection of case studies that showcase educational programs across the United States. Framed against the political backdrop of a country in which climate change denial presents a significant threat to global action for mitigation and adaptation, each case study examines the various strategies employed by those working in this increasingly challenging sociopolitical environment. Via co-authored chapters written by educational researchers and climate change education practitioners in conversation with one another, a wide range of education programs is represented. These range from traditional institutions such as K-12 schools and universities to the contemporary learning environments of museums and environmental education centres. The role of mass media and community-level educational initiatives is also examined. The authors cover a multitude of topics, including the challenge of multi-stakeholder projects, tensions between indigenous knowledge and scientific research, education for youth activism, and professional learning. By telling stories of success and failure from the field, this book provides climate change researchers and educators with tools to help them navigate increasingly rough and rising waters.

This book highlights best practices in climate change education through the analysis of a rich collection of case studies that showcase educational programs across the United States. Framed against the political backdrop of a country in which climate change denial presents a significant threat to global action for mitigation and adaptation, each case study examines the various strategies employed by those working in this increasingly challenging sociopolitical environment. Via co-authored chapters written by educational researchers and climate change education practitioners in conversation with one another, a wide range of education programs is represented. These range from traditional institutions such as K-12 schools and universities to the contemporary learning environments of museums and environmental education centres. The role of mass media and community-level educational initiatives is also examined. The authors cover a multitude of topics, including the challenge of multi-stakeholder projects, tensions between indigenous knowledge and scientific research, education for youth activism, and professional learning. By telling stories of success and failure from the field, this book provides climate change researchers and educators with tools to help them navigate increasingly rough and rising waters.

Makes three key assertions: focuses on the ways "climate change" has been discursively constructed; examines how those discursive constructions work to normalize a denialism beyond that of the officially designated "denialists"; and identifies that normalized denial as a form of cultural trauma. Uses several literary texts to assess how they attempt to grapple with the representational difficulties of articulating and thus containing the traumatic challenge at that crisis's heart. Explores how the disarticulations of climate change discourse might be illuminated by framing them in terms of the trope of "trauma."

Economic Incentives are playing an increasingly important role in pollution control.This authoritative collection - edited by leading contributors to the field - presents the most important published work on the legal and economic instruments and institutions which have been used during the last thirty years to control pollution. The papers focus on issues of instrument design, implementation, enforcement and evaluation, and consider strategies for coping with uncertainty and 'second-best' situations.

This book provides a wealth of information and a critically required framework for sustainable automobile policy development in major Asian countries. It also gives wide-ranging policy options, ranging from technological to institutional solutions to automobile emission problems, based on empirical case studies and comparative policy and regulatory analysis. It is a useful reference with valuable insights on how rapidly changing economies are adopting their policy and regulatory structures to cope with the progressively severe environmental impacts of automobile increase.

Countries around the world are spending up to $500 billion per year on subsidising fossil fuel consumption. By some estimates, the G20 countries alone are spending around another $450 billion on subsidising fossil fuel production. In addition, the indirect social welfare costs of these subsidies have been shown to be substantial - for instance due to air pollution, road congestion, climate change, and economic inefficiency, to name a few. Considering these numbers, there is no doubt that fossil fuel subsidies cause severe economic distortions that compromise countries' prospects of achieving equitable and sustainable development. This book provides a guide to the complex challenge of designing, assessing, and implementing effective fossil fuel subsidy reforms. It shows that subsidy reform requires a careful balancing of complex economic and political trade-offs, as well as measures to mitigate adverse effects on vulnerable households and to assist firms with implementing efficiency enhancing measures. Going beyond the purely fiscal perspective, this book emphasises that smart subsidy reforms can contribute to all three dimensions of sustainable development - environment, society, and economy. Over the course of eight chapters, this book considers a wide range of agents and stakeholders, markets, and policy measures in order to distil the key principles of designing effective fossil fuel subsidy reforms. This book will be of great relevance to scholars and policy makers with an interest in energy economics and policy, climate change policy, and sustainable development more broadly.

This book explores various facets of the transition to renewable energy in the Arctic region. It critically examines the adverse effects of fossil fuel extraction and use, environmental and social impacts of climate change, and the possibility of a low carbon energy system through innovation and technology. Drawing together a diverse range of contributors and considering a range of new energy sources, this volume also looks at the scale of the transition challenges in the Arctic energy production and use, the necessary flexibility to balance energy demand and supply, the need of a more integrated energy infrastructure, and the new energy business models, health and safety, and quality standards for the region. Finally, it examines the transit and influence between Arctic and non-Arctic countries, in terms of growth, partnerships and new dynamics of a transitioning process to a sustainable energy system. Focusing on specific case studies that represent the most relevant energy projects in the region, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy policy and transitions, climate change, global business and sustainable development.

Understanding Human Ecology offers a coherent conceptual framework for human ecology - a clear approach for understanding the many systems we are part of and for how we frame and understand the problems we face. Blending natural, social, and cognitive sciences with dynamical systems theory, this key text offers offer systems approaches that are accessible to all, from the undergraduate student to policymakers and practitioners across government, business, and community. In the first edition, road-tested and refined over a decade of teaching and workshops, the authors built a clear, inspiring and important framework for anyone approaching the management of complex problems and the transition to sustainability. Fully updated for the second edition, the book now goes further in using systems-thinking principles to explain fundamental processes of change in social-ecological systems. Revised case examples provide a working application of these principles, whilst a new discussion of the hierarchical structure of complex systems is included to guide practical policy making. This new edition is essential reading for students and scholars of human ecology, environmental ethics, and sustainability studies.