Rivers, landscapes, whole territories: these are the latest entities environmental activists have fought hard to include in the relentless expansion of rights in our world. But what does it mean for a landscape to have rights? Why would anyone want to create such rights, and to what end? Is it a good idea, and does it come with risks? This book presents the logic behind giving nature rights and discusses the most important cases in which this has happened, ranging from constitutional rights of nature in Ecuador to rights for rivers in New Zealand, Colombia, and India. Mihnea Tanasescu offers clear answers to the thorny questions that the intrusion of nature into law is sure to raise.

This second edition of An Environmental History of the World continues to present a concise history, from ancient to modern times, of the interactions between human societies and the natural environment, including the other forms of life that inhabit our planet. Throughout their evolutionary history, humans have affected the natural environment, sometimes with a promise of sustainable balance, but also in a destructive manner. This book investigates the ways in which environmental changes, often the result of human actions, have caused historical trends in human societies. This process has happened in every historical period and in every part of the inhabited earth.

The book is organized into ten chapters. The main chapters follow a chronological path through the history of mankind, in relationship to ecosystems around the world. The first explains what environmental history is, and argues for its importance in understanding the present state of the world's ecological problems. Chapters two through eight form the core of the historical analysis, each concentrating on a major period of human history (pre-civilized, early civilizations, classical, medieval, early modern, early and later twentieth century, and contemporary) that has been characterized by large-scale changes in the relationship between human societies and the biosphere, and each gives several case studies that illustrate significant patterns occurring at that time. The chapters covering contemporary times discuss the physical impacts of the huge growth in population and technology, and the human responses to these problems. Our moral obligations to nature and how we can achieve a sustainable balance between technology and the environment are also considered. This revised second edition takes account of new research and the course of history containing new sections on global warming, the response of New Orleans to the hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the experience of the Dutch people in protecting their low-lying lands against the encroachments of rivers, lakes, and the North Sea. New material is also offered on the Pacific Islands, including the famous case of Easter Island.

This is an original work that reaches further than other environmental histories. Rather than looking at humans and the environment as separate entities, this book places humans within the community of life. The relationship between environmental thought and actions, and their evolution, is discussed throughout. Little environmental or historical knowledge is assumed from the reader in this introduction to environmental history. We cannot reach a useful understanding of modern environmental problems without the aid of perspective provided by environmental history, with its illustrations of the ways in which past decisions helped or hindered the interaction between nature and culture. This book will be influential and timely to all interested in or researching the world in which we live.

Native Americans suffer disproportionately from many social and health disparities. High rates of poverty, exposure to environmental toxins, and various forms of violence all increase the risk of health problems, including disabilities, yet there is very little published scholarship concerning Native American experiences with disabilities. In collecting contributions on various aspects of disability in Native American populations in one volume, this book seeks to redress this lack of attention. Writing about regions of the United States, Canada, and Australia, and spanning a diverse range of settings from remote rural areas, to reservations, to college campuses, the authors are attentive to the impact of specific environments on their inhabitants. Taking into account both physical and social environment, and recognizing the importance of cultural context, this book is a good starting point for anyone interested in developing a better understanding of the experience of Native peoples living with disabilities. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work in Disability & Rehabilitation.

Futures: Imagining Socioecological Transformation brings together leading scholars to explore how we might know, enact, and struggle for, the conjoined social and ecological transformations we need to achieve just and sustainable futures. The question of transformation, and how it might be achieved, is explored across a variety of topics and geographical sites, and through heterodox analytical and theoretical approaches, in a collective effort to move beyond a form of critique that hands down judgements, to one that brings new ideas and new possibilities to life. Chapters are lively and original engagements with concrete situations that sparkle with creativity. Together, they add up to an impressive study of how to live, and what to struggle for, in the complex socioecological landscapes of the Anthropocene. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Climate-induced disasters constitute a major risk to peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. Drawing on case studies from Cambodia, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Samoa, the contributions in this volume examine local response, recovery and adaptation strategies, incorporating the perspectives and knowledge of affected individuals and communities. Asia-Pacific is the world's most disaster-prone region, accounting for about half of the climate-related displacements of 19 million people globally in 2017. Climate-related, fast-onset hazards, such as floods, cyclones and typhoons, have claimed many lives, displaced a high number of people and caused widespread damage over the past twenty years. The cost of short-term response to and medium- to long-term recovery from climate-induced disasters falls disproportionately on the poorest and most marginalised communities within Asia-Pacific countries. This book presents richly-detailed qualitative research from diverse contexts across the Asia-Pacific region, and adds to scholarship on the trajectory of community resilience and adaptation to climate-related hazards.

Ecotourism is a useful concept, but not a very well defined one. It has been debated in theory and attempted in practice for nearly two decades. Its key goal is to reduce the net environmental impact of the tourism industry, via mechanisms including minimal impact management measures, education, community involvement, private conservation, contributions to public protected areas, expansion of ecotourism enterprises and mainstreaming of ecotourism principles.Focusing on fundamental ecotourism concepts, this broad-based textbook provides a basis for studies into environment-based tourism. It covers key topics such as the management, economics and potential environmental impacts both positive and negative of this popular and growing sector. Written for tourism students and an ideal resource for undergraduate courses, "Ecotourism: Principles and Practices" will also interest industry practitioners and researchers.

The impact of global environmental change on surface water resources affects gendered livelihoods, governance and development. The deterioration of water quality, rising temperatures, and changes in the seasonality, quantity, and duration of precipitation increasingly alters human, animal and plant demand for water resources. This edited volume explores how a feminist political ecology framework can bring new and exciting insights to the study of livelihoods dependent on vulnerable rivers, watersheds, wetlands and coastal environments. Bringing together political ecologists and feminist scholars from multiple disciplines, the book develops solution-oriented advances to theory, policy and planning to tackle the complexity of these global environmental changes.Using applied research on the contemporary management of rivers, watersheds and coastal wetlands in the South Pacific, Central and South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and North America, the authors draw on a variety of methodological perspectives and new theoretical approaches to demonstrate the importance of considering multiple layers of social difference as produced by and central to the effective governance and local management of water resources. This unique collection employs a unifying feminist political ecology framework that emphasizes the ways that gender interacts with other social and geographical locations of water resource users. In doing so, the book further questions the normative gender discourses that underlie policies and practices surrounding water management and climate change, large-scale development and dams, resource knowledge and expertise, and critical livelihood studies. The book should be of interest to students and scholars of environment studies, development studies, anthropology, feminist and environmental geography, as well as women's and gender studies.

Finalist for the National Book Award An intimate reckoning with aquifer depletion in America's heartland The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force. Anthropologist Lucas Bessire journeyed back to western Kansas, where five generations of his family lived as irrigation farmers and ranchers, to try to make sense of this vital resource and its loss. His search for water across the drying High Plains brings the reader face to face with the stark realities of industrial agriculture, eroding democratic norms, and surreal interpretations of a looming disaster. Yet the destination is far from predictable, as the book seeks to move beyond the words and genres through which destruction is often known. Instead, this journey into the morass of eradication offers a series of unexpected discoveries about what it means to inherit the troubled legacies of the past and how we can take responsibility for a more inclusive, sustainable future. An urgent and unsettling meditation on environmental change, Running Out is a revelatory account of family, complicity, loss, and what it means to find your way back home.

Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature. Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western policy, theory and literature, Lisa Garforth explains how its developing entanglement with popular culture and mainstream politics has shaped successive green future visions and initiatives. In the face of apocalyptic, despairing or indifferent responses to contemporary ecological dilemmas, utopias and the utopian method seem more necessary than ever. This distinctive reading of green political thought and culture will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to all interested in why green utopias continue to matter in the cultivation of ecological values and the emergence of new forms of human and nonhuman well-being.

"Ecology and Society" is an introduction to 'green ideas' for students in the social sciences. It goes beyond traditional sociological boundaries to show how society interacts with nature but suggests that there are flaws in the philosophy and politics of the green movement.

The book analyses ecological limits on, and effects of, industrialism and economic growth. Martell assesses forms of society and politics appropriate to sustainability. He evaluates proposals for frugality and argues for global and interventionist solutions over the decentralized and capitalist proposals of greens and economic liberals.

The volume analyses the philosophy of environmentalism and assesses explanations for the development of the green movement in recent years. Martell shows how ecology both revolutionizes and relies on traditions in political thought such as conservatism, liberalism, socialism and feminism. In an assessment of ways of rethinking relations between society and nature he proposes a realistic perspective over approaches popular in sociology and the green movement.

The book concludes with an assessment of the future of the green movement, arguing for a focus on politics and alliances, rather than social agents or lifestyle politics, in green politics.

How do scientists, scholars, and other experts engage with the general public and with the communities affected by their work or residing in their sites of study? Where are the fine lines between public scholarship, civic engagement, and activism? Must academics 'give back' once they collect data and publish results? In this volume, authors from a wide range of disciplines examine these relationships to assess how they can be fruitful or challenging. Describing the methodological and ethical issues that experts must consider when carrying out public scholarship, this book includes a checklist for critical factors of success in engagement and an examination of the role of digital social media in science communication. Illustrated by a range of case studies addressing environmental issues (climate change, resource use, post-disaster policy) and education, it offers an investigation into the levels and ways in which scholars can engage, and how and whether academics and experts who engage in community work and public scholarship are acknowledged and rewarded for doing so by their institutions. Also bringing into the debate the perspective of citizens who have collaborated with academics, the book offers an exploration of the democratizing potential of participatory action research.

In 1972, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis began collaborating on the Gaia hypothesis. They suggested that over geological time, life on Earth has had a major role in both producing and regulating its own environment. Gaia is now an ecological and environmental worldview underpinning vital scientific and cultural debates over environmental issues. Their ideas have transformed the Earth and life sciences, as well as contemporary conceptions of nature. Their correspondence describes these crucial developments from the inside, showing how their partnership proved decisive for the development of the Gaia hypothesis. Clarke and Dutreuil provide historical background and explain the concepts and references introduced throughout the Lovelock-Margulis correspondence, while highlighting the major landmarks of their collaboration within the sequence of almost 300 letters written between 1970 and 2007. This book will be of interest to researchers in ecology, history of science, environmental history and climate change, and cultural science studies.

Winner of the Charles H. Cooley Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Richard G. Mitchell Jr. spent more than a dozen years among survivalists at public conferences, private meetings, and clandestine training camps across America. He takes us inside a compelling, hidden world more connected to the chaos of modern life many of us experience than the label separatist suggests. In survivalism Mitchell found a profound and meaningful critique of contemporary industrial society, a subculture in which the real evil is not repressive government but the far more insidious influence of a Planet Microsoft mentality with its abundance of empty choices. Survivalists, Mitchell shows us, are seeking resistance, not struggling against it; they are looking for ways to define themselves and test their talents in a society that is becoming devitalized and formless.

Along with windstorms, floods are the most common and widespread of all natural disasters. Although they can often be predicted, they cause loss of life, damage and destruction, as many urban communities are located near coasts and rivers. In terms of victims, floods are responsible for more than half the deaths caused by natural catastrophes. As flood events appear to be rapidly increasing world-wide, an advanced and universal approach to urban flooding and how to manage will help reduce flood impact.

This textbook integrates expertise from disciplines such as hydrology, sociology, architecture, urban design, construction and water resources engineering. The subject is approached from an international perspective and case studies, exercises, expert advice and literature recommendations are included to support the theory and illustrations.

Developed by a team of specialists, this volume is intended for urban flood management education of hydrology, geography, civil and environmental engineering, and management students at university level. Moreover, professionals will find this book useful as a reference. More information on flood resilience and urban flood management can be found at www.floodresiliencegroup.org

For a preview, please go to http: //issuu.com/crcpress/docs/urban_flood_management

A Handbook of Environmental Toxicology focuses on two key aspects: human disorders and ecotoxicology as affected by major toxins originating from biological sources and pollutants, as well as radiation generated spontaneously or as a result of anthropogenic activity. A diverse array of these potentially harmful agents regularly appear in the atmosphere, soil, water and food, compromising both human health and biodiversity in natural and managed ecosystems. This book: - provides authoritative reviews together with specialist short communications to complement the main chapters and address contemporary issues with important case studies; - explores the cutting edge of research and also indicates the likely direction of future developments; - contains extensive coverage of toxicants that are of significant current interest and will be of increasing concern for many years to come; and - encourages international cooperation in future research on pollution and other environmental agents causing harm to human health and degradation of natural habitats in the ecosystem. Written by an international team of authors from a range of educational, medical and research establishments, this book is an essential reference for advanced students and researchers in the areas of environmental sciences, ecology, agriculture, environmental health and medicine, in addition to industry and government personnel responsible for environmental regulations and directives.

The world is faced with significant and interrelated challenges in the 21st century which threaten human rights in a number of ways. This book examines three of the largest issues of the century - armed conflict, environment, and poverty - and examines how these may be addressed using a human rights framework. It considers how these challenges threaten human rights and reassesses our understanding of human rights in the light of these issues. This multidisciplinary text considers both foundational and applied questions such as the relationship between morality and the laws of war, as well as the application of the International Human Rights Framework in cyber space. Alongside analyses from some of the most prominent lawyers, philosophers, and political theorists in the debate, each section includes contributions by those who have served as Special Rapporteurs within the United Nations Human Rights System on the challenges facing international human rights laws today.

This book presents a 360-degree picture of the world of insects and explores how their existence affects our lives: the "good, bad, and ugly" aspects of their interactions with humankind. It provides a lucid introductory text for beginning undergraduate students in the life sciences, particularly those pursuing beginner courses in entomology, agriculture, and botany.

What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization-in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics-which have transformed the way we live. Societies that have undergone all four transitions emerge into an era of radically different population dynamics, food surpluses (and waste), abundant energy use, and expanding economic opportunities. Simultaneously, in other parts of the world, hundreds of millions remain largely untouched by these developments. Through erudite storytelling, Vaclav Smil investigates the fascinating and complex interactions of these transitions. He argues that the moral imperative to share modernity's benefits has become more acute with increasing economic inequality, but addressing this imbalance would make it exceedingly difficult to implement the changes necessary for the long-term preservation of the environment. Thus, managing the fifth transition-environmental changes from natural-resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and global warming-will determine the success or eventual failure of the grand transitions that have made the world we live in today.

Habit rules our lives. And yet climate change and the catastrophic future it portends, makes it clear that we cannot go on like this. Our habits are integral to narratives of the good life, to social norms and expectations, as well as to economic reality. Such shared shapes are vital. Yet while many of our individual habits seem perfectly reasonable, when aggregated together they spell disaster. Beyond consumerism, other forms of life and patterns of dwelling are clearly possible. But how can we get there from here? Who precisely is the 'we' that our habits have created, and who else might we be? Philosophy is about emancipation-from illusions, myths, and oppression. In Reoccupy Earth, the noted philosopher David Wood shows how an approach to philosophy attuned to our ecological existence can suspend the taken-for-granted and open up alternative forms of earthly dwelling. Sharing the earth, as we do, raises fundamental questions about space and time, place and history, territory and embodiment-questions that philosophy cannot directly answer but can help us to frame and to work out for ourselves. Deconstruction exposes all manner of exclusion, violence to the other, and silent subordination. Phenomenology and Whitehead's process philosophy offer further resources for an ecological imagination. Bringing an uncommon lucidity, directness, and even practicality to sophisticated philosophical questions, Wood plots experiential pathways that disrupt our habitual existence and challenge our everyday complacency. In walking us through a range of reversals, transformations, and estrangements that thinking ecologically demands of us, Wood shows how living responsibly with the earth means affirming the ways in which we are vulnerable, receptive, and dependent, and the need for solidarity all round. If we take seriously values like truth, justice, and compassion we must be willing to contemplate that the threat we pose to the earth might demand our own species' demise. Yet we have the capacity to live responsibly. In an unfashionable but spirited defense of an enlightened anthropocentrism, Wood argues that to deserve the privileges of Reason we must demonstrably deploy it through collective sustainable agency. Only in this way can we reinhabit the earth.

"The Transition to Sustainable Living and Practice" provides a series of insights into real alternatives to the current economic malaise, with an examination of key themes such as transition towns, traditional villages, new green financial concepts, the sustainable utopia, co-operative farming, sustainability and activism, ecofeminism, green protectionism, intentional communities and a green philosophy of money.

Cities are playing an ever more important role in the mitigation and adaption to climate change. This book examines the politics shaping whether, how and to what extent cities engage in global climate governance. By studying the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, and drawing on scholarship from international relations, social movements, global governance and field theory, the book introduces a theory of global urban governance fields. This theory links observed increases in city engagement and coordination to the convergence of C40 cities around particular ways of understanding and enforcing climate governance. The collective capacity of cities to produce effective and socially equitable global climate governance is also analysed. Highlighting the constraints facing city networks and the potential pitfalls associated with a city-driven global response, this assessment of the transformative potential of cities will be of great interest to researchers, graduate students and policymakers in global environmental politics and policy.

Suzanne Romaine and Daniel Nettle argue that the loss of linguistic diversity is just as threatening as the loss of global biodiversity. Approximately half of all known languages have disappeared in the last five hundred years, and with the advent of global communication, the rate of extinction is accelerating to the level that, according to some, 90% of all languages are in danger of becoming extinct during the next century. The loss of both linguistic and biological diversity is part of a much larger and more serious problem - the near-total collapse of our worldwide ecosystem. Languages are enmeshed in social and geographical matrix just as animals and plants, and their demise is symptomatic of the illness and dealth of cultures and ways of life different from our own. Romaine and Nettle describe the background of this situation, how the current catastrophe occurred, and what can be done about it. They argue for the importance of maintaining diverse, localized responses to the environment, and show how the maintenance of different languages is necessarily linked to the diversity of human beings.

How did medieval Europeans use and change their environments, think about the natural world, and try to handle the natural forces affecting their lives? This groundbreaking environmental history examines medieval relationships with the natural world from the perspective of social ecology, viewing human society as a hybrid of the cultural and the natural. Richard Hoffmann's interdisciplinary approach sheds important light on such central topics in medieval history as the decline of Rome, religious doctrine, urbanization and technology, as well as key environmental themes, among them energy use, sustainability, disease and climate change. Revealing the role of natural forces in events previously seen as purely human, the book explores issues including the treatment of animals, the 'tragedy of the commons', agricultural clearances and agrarian economies. By introducing medieval history in the context of social ecology, it brings the natural world into historiography as an agent and object of history itself.