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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Social impact of environmental issues
This is the fifth volume in a series designed to publish theoretical, empirical and review papers on scientific human ecology. Human ecology is interpreted to include structural and functional changes in human social organization and sociocultural systems as these changes may be affected by, interdepent with, or identical to changes in ecosystemic, evolutionary or ethological processes factors or mechanisms. Three degrees of scope are included in this interpretation: the adaptation of sociocultural forces to bioecological forces; the interactions, two-way adaptations, between sociocultural and bioecological forces; and the integration, or unified interactions, of sociocultural with bioecological forces.
Over the last century, psychoanalysis has transformed the ways in which we think about our relationships with others. Psychoanalytic concepts and methods, such as the unconscious and dream analysis, have greatly impacted on social, cultural and political theory. Reinterpreting the ways in which geography has explored people's mental maps and their deepest feelings about places, this text outlines a new cartography of the subject. The author maps key co-ordinates of meaning, identity and power across the sites of body and city. Exploring a wide range of critical thinking, particularly the work of Lefebvre, Freud and Lacan, he analyzes the dialectic between the individual and the external world to present a pathbreaking psychoanalysis of space.
This book examines the methods and approaches currently being taken by the global community of youth in influencing environmental policymakers of the United Nations. It is divided into two sections: The Groundswell Approach, exploring the use of social media and mass gatherings aimed at raising public awareness of the issue of climate change; and The Direct Approach, a participatory methodology that encourages collaboration directly with the policymaker and youth in the discussions and creation of progressive climate policy for the world. The book also delivers a detailed analysis of the United Nations' only database of youth-produced documentary films related to climate change research, impacts, and proposed solutions: the Youth Climate Report, arguing that film is a powerful and effective communications tool for the policymaker. The book proposes two frameworks and explores their in-field applications for successful youth climate activism.
What is space? And why are questions of space important to social
theory? "Society, Action and Space" is the first English
translation of a book which has been widely recognized in Europe as
a major contribution to the interface between geography and social
theory.
This book discusses Nature and Human Communities in the historical and social background of Asia. Part 1 deals with the problems of coexistence among human beings. Part 2 explores coexistence between human beings and nature. The text focuses on local/regional commitments to solve problems and integrate specialized knowledge. It considers the kinds of relationship between human communities and nature that may lead to a more balanced, sustainable future for both. Avian Influenza poses a looming threat for human and animal health. The old paradigm was that the disease in waterfowl, poultry, pigs and man was caused by separate viruses that stayed within their own niche. Deadly outbreaks have shattered this view. This timely reference examines such sensitive issues as regulation of low pathogenic and high pathogenic AI, surveillance of waterfowl, live bird markets, and outbreak control in densely populated areas.
Climate change is a key problem of the 21st century. China, as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has committed to stabilize its current emissions and dramatically increase the share of electricity production from non-fossil fuels by 2030. However, this is only a first step: in the longer term, China needs to aggressively strive to reach a goal of zero-emissions. Through detailed discussions of electricity pricing, electric vehicle policies, nuclear energy policies, and renewable energy policies, this book reviews how near-term climate and energy policies can affect long-term decarbonization pathways beyond 2030, building the foundations for decarbonization in advance of its realization. Focusing primarily on the electricity sector in China - the main battleground for decarbonization over the next century - it provides a valuable resource for researchers and policymakers, as well as energy and climate experts.
This book is an original, accessible, and thought-provoking introduction to the severe and broad-ranging challenges that climate change presents and how societies can respond. It synthesizes and deploys cutting-edge scholarship on the range of social, economic, political, and philosophical issues surrounding climate change. The treatment is introductory, but the book is written "with attitude", for nobody has yet charted in coherent, integrative, and effective fashion a way to move societies beyond their current paralysis as they face the challenges of climate change. The coverage begins with an examination of science, public opinion, and policy making, with special attention to organized climate change denial. The book then moves to economic analysis and its limits; different kinds of policies; climate justice; governance at all levels from the local to the global; and the challenge of an emerging "Anthropocene" in which the mostly unintended consequences of human action drive the earth system into a more chaotic and unstable era. The conclusion considers the prospects for fundamental transition in ideas, movements, economics, and governance.
This book of readings, meditations, rituals and workshop notes prepared on three continents helps us remember that environmental defense is nothing less than "Self" defense. Including magnificent illustrations of Australia's rainforests, Thinking Like a Mountain provides a context for ritual identification with the natural environment, inviting us to begin a process of "community therapy" in defense of Mother Earth. It helps us experience our place in the web of life, rather than on the apex of some human-centred pyramid. An important deep ecology educational tool for activist, school and religious groups, Thinking Like a Mountain can also be used for personal reflection. Thinking Like a Mountain has been made available through New Catalyst Books. New Catalyst Books is an imprint of New Society Publishers, aimed at providing readers with access to a wider range of books dealing with sustainability issues by bringing books back into print that have enduring value in the field. For more information on New Catalyst Books click here .
Ecology is indispensable to understanding the biological world and addressing the environmental problems humanity faces. Its philosophy has never been more important. In this book, James Justus introduces readers to the philosophically rich issues ecology poses. Besides its crucial role in biological science generally, climate change, biodiversity loss, and other looming environmental challenges make ecology's role in understanding such threats and identifying solutions to them all the more critical. When ecology is applied and its insights marshalled to address these problems and guide policy formation, interesting philosophical issues emerge. Justus sets them out in detail, and explores the often ethically charged dimensions of applied ecological science, using accessible language and a wealth of scientifically-informed examples.
The book integrates for the first time existing ecosystem theories and is therefore able to present a full ecological and theoretical pattern. It shows that we are able to understand ecosystems and their reactions, provided that we use all basic systems ecology for different aspects of ecosystem properties. The first edition of this book was published in 1992. This second edition contains the many recently published and presented contributions on ecosystem theories, which show even more strongly that an integration of the existing ecosystem theories is needed and also possible.
The existence of the human race has created inevitable effects on our surrounding environment. To prevent further harm to the world's ecosystems, it becomes imperative to assess mankind's impact on and create sustainability initiatives to maintain the world's ecosystems. Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change Adaptation Strategies is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on the scientific, technical, and socio-economic factors related to climate change assessment. Providing a comprehensive overview of perspectives on sustainability protection of environmental resources, this book is ideally designed for policy makers, professionals, government officials, upper-level students, and academics interested in emerging research on climate change.
The Asian monsoon and associated river systems supply the water that sustains a large portion of humanity, and has enabled Asia to become home to some of the oldest and most productive farming systems on Earth. This book uses climate data and environmental models to provide a detailed review of variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene, and its impacts on farming systems and human settlement. Future changes to the monsoon due to anthropogenically-driven global warming are also discussed. Faced with greater rainfall and more cyclones in South Asia, as well as drying in North China and regional rising sea levels, understanding how humans have developed resilient strategies in the past to climate variations is critical. Containing important implications for the large populations and booming economies in the Indo-Pacific region, this book is an important resource for researchers and graduate students studying the climate, environmental history, agronomy and archaeology of Asia.
The contribution of economic thought and method to environmental management needs practical illustration. Too few books on the subject achieve such an outcome. This book is among the notable exceptions. That economics can provide a powerful vehicle for communicating an integrated understanding of the often diverse scientific findings germane to environmental im pact assessment needs to be illustrated convincingly. This book does just that. But it does more. It speaks across cultures: not to transfer know-how from one culture to another, but rather to activate an effective exchange of insights from one locale on the planet to another. As such, it is a genuine contribution to the great en vironmental exhortation of our times - think globally, act locally. Too often the people best placed to make such contributions are too committed to practical outcomes and making a living doing so. Just occasionally, however, they can be persuaded to make the special effort required to communicate globally. In this book, David James has once again orchestrated the contributions of vir tuoso performers. In doing so he has emulated the contribution he sustained throughout the International Drylands Project and preparation of the books written with John Dixon and Paul Sherman: The Economics ofDry/and Management and Case Studies in Dry/and Management (Earthscan, London). Taken together with his recent work as Special Commissioner for the path breaking national Forest and Timber Inquiry for the Australian Government, we have a body of work characterised by great worthiness, integrity and true global significance."
This volume offers an open, transdisciplinary living space (also green) through which to explore the different connections between Basilicata and Southern Italy, cinema, and ecology, and thus to reflect on the different forms through which the historical, cultural, and social contexts of Southern Italian regions have been variously identified and represented. In order to explore these connections, the volume embraces a wide range of perspectives that may all be grouped under the key term film ecocriticism, offering the reader a thorough analysis not only of the different ways of representing reality but also of the processes of signification through which reality itself can be understood, rethought, and transformed. This is the general framework within which the authors consider film as a proper, effective medium for ecocritical and ecophilosophical reflections concerning not only Basilicata (to which the greater part of the volume is dedicated) but also Southern Italy and, therefore, its history and its territories, communities, and identities. Furthermore, in an even more general sense, Basilicata and Southern Italy reconnects with the very idea of the South, and of all Souths, to which this volume is dedicated.
Examines portrayals of plants and landscapes in recent German novels and films, addressing the contemporary forms of racism, nationalism, and social and ecological injustice that they expose. Plants, Places, and Power is a study of plants and landscapes in and beyond contemporary German-language literature and film. Stories and images of plants and landscapes in cultural productions are key sites for exposing the violent legacies of German colonialism and Nazism and for addressing contemporary forms of racism, nationalism, social and ecological injustice, and gender inequity. The novels and films discussed in this book address these key political issues in contemporary Europe and propose alternative ways for people to live together on this planet by formulating more inclusive and sustainable concepts of belonging. The book has two main objectives: to offer new approaches to contemporary literature and film from an intersectional, ecological perspective, and to form a canon. All of the works focused on, from Mo Asumang's documentary film Roots Germania (2007) through Faraz Shariat's Futur Drei (2020) and from Yoko Tawada's novel Das nackte Auge (2004) to Sasa Stanisic's Herkunft (2019), are by female artists, artists of color, artists who have experienced forced displacement, and/or queer artists. In five chapters, Maria Stehle reads artworks in reference to ecological systems, develops forms of eco- and social criticism based on art, and intertwines ecological and critical thinking with questions of form, affect, and aesthetics.
Deciding what user impacts are natural or unnatural has inspired much debate. Biophysically, moose cause similar kinds of soil and vegetation impacts as hikers. Yet moose are the sign of nature while hikers are the sign of damage. The field of outdoor recreation is beset with paradoxes, and this book presents a unique, alternative framework to address these dilemmas. Examining outdoor recreation through the lens of ecological theory, Ryan draws from theorists such as Foucault, Derrida and Latour. The book explores minimum impact strategies designed to protect and enhance ecological integrity, but that also require a disturbing amount of policing of users, which runs counter to the freedom users seek. Recent ecological theory suggests that outdoor recreation's view of nature as balanced when impacts are removed is outdated and incorrect. What is needed, and indeed Ryan presents, is a paradoxical and ecological view of humans as neither natural nor unnatural, a view that embraces some traces in nature.
WINNER OF THE MILES FRANKLIN AWARD 2020 An exquisitely written, heartbreaking and hopeful novel of culture, language, tradition, suffering and empowerment 'A groundbreaking novel for black and white Australia' Richard Flanagan, Man Booker Prize winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North Knowing that he will soon die, Albert "Poppy" Gondiwindi has one final task he must fulfill. A member of the indigenous Wiradjuri tribe, he has spent his adult life in Prosperous House and the town of Massacre Plains, a small enclave on the banks of the Murrumby River. Before he takes his last breath, Poppy is determined to pass on the language of his people, the traditions of his ancestors, and everything that was ever remembered by those who came before him. The land itself aids him; he finds the words on the wind. After his passing, Poppy's granddaughter, August, returns home from Europe, where she has lived the past ten years, to attend his burial. Her overwhelming grief is compounded by the pain, anger, and sadness of memory of growing up in poverty before her mother's incarceration, of the racism she and her people endured, of the mysterious disappearance of her sister when they were children; an event that has haunted her and changed her life. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Determined to make amends and honor Poppy and her family, she vows to save their land a quest guided by the voice of her grandfather that leads into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river. Told in three masterfully woven narratives, The Yield is a celebration of language and an exploration of what makes a place "home." A story of a people and a culture dispossessed, it is also a joyful reminder of what once was and what endures a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling, and identity, that offers hope for the future.
To reduce emissions and address climate change, we need to invest in renewables and rapidly decarbonise our energy networks. However, decarbonisation is often seen as a technical project, detached from questions of politics and social justice. What if this is leading to unfair transitions, in which some people bear the costs of change while others benefit? In this timely and expansive book, Ed Atkins asks: are we getting decarbonisation right? And how could it be made better for people and communities? In doing so, this book proposes a different type of energy transition. One that prioritises and takes opportunities to do better – to provide better jobs, community ownership and improve people’s homes and lives.
Political elites have been evading the causes of climate change through deceptive fixes. Their market-type instruments such as carbon trading aim to incentivise technological innovation which will supposedly decarbonize or replace dominant high-carbon systems. In practice this techno-market framework has perpetuated climate change and social injustices, thus provoking public controversy. Using this opportunity, social movements have counterposed low-carbon, resource-light, socially just alternatives. Such transformative mobilisations can fulfil the popular slogan, 'System Change Not Climate Change'. This book develops key critical concepts through case studies such as GM crops, biofuels, waste incineration and Green New Deal agendas.
This book presents the environmental history of the Delta of the lowland rivers Rhine and Meuse, an ecological story on evolving human-environmental relations coping with climate change and sea-level rise. It offers a combination of in depth ecology and environmental history, dealing with exploitation of land and water, the use of everything nature provided, the development of fisheries and agriculture, changes in biodiversity of higher plants, fish, birds, mammals, and invasive exotics. The book is unique: it is the first book written in English on the integrated environmental history of the Delta, from pre-historic times up to the present day. It covers the legacy of human intervention, the inescapable fate of reclaimed, nevertheless subsiding and sinking polders, a ~bathtubsa (TM) attacked by numerous floods, reclaimed in the Middle Ages and unwittingly exposed to the rising sea-level and the increased amplitude between high and low water in the rivers. The river channels, constricted and regulated between embankments, lost their floodplains, silted up, degraded and incised. Cultivation of raised bog deposits led to oxidation and compacting of peat and clay, resulting in progressive subsidence and flooding; arable land had to be changed into grassland and wetland. For millennia muscular strength and wind- and waterpower moulded the country into its basic form. From 1800 onwards, acceleration and scaling up by steam-power and electricity, and exponential population growth, resulted in the erection of human structures a ~fixed forevera (TM), and severe pressure on the environment. The present-day Delta is a large wetland several metres below sea-level, where humans a ~keeptheir feet drya (TM) only by the application of advanced technical means. The synthesis presents a blueprint for future management and restoration, from progressive reclamation of land in the past, to adaptation of human needs to the inevitable forces of nature.
Eco-criticism, as explored in this volume edited by Sr. Candy D'Cunha, begins with the concept of imagination, in other words, eco-aesthetics through which the power of words, stories, images, essence, and meaning are directly applied to environmental problems that afflict planet earth today. On the other hand, eco-criticism also concurs with the other branches of environmental humanities in the realm of history, ethics, anthropology, religious studies, and humanistic geography, among others. Arising from developing world perspectives, these fields harmonize environmental phenomena to comprehend the array of environmental concerns through a transnational perspective. In addition to these, the honest depiction of the harm done to the environment is to enable human to rethink and reorient themselves for radically transforming the present eco-system.
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.
Over recent years there has been an increasing awareness of the risks of locating hazardous industries near heavily populated, environmentally sensitive areas. This new awareness demands a novel approach to safety planning for hazardous industries; one that looks at the problem from the point of view of integrated regional risk assessment which, besides the risks arising from natural events, should also include the risks arising from the processing plants, storage and the transportation of dangerous goods. Volume I of Integrated Regional Risk Assessment highlights the main procedures for the assessment of risks to health and environmental impacts from continuous emissions of pollutants into air, water and soil under normal operating conditions. Volume II deals with the assessment of consequences of accidental releases, helping to answer such questions as: What can go wrong? What are the effects and consequences? How often will it happen? GBP/LISTGBP The main procedural steps are supported by relevant, internationally recognised methods of risk assessment. The book also reviews criteria and guidelines for the implementation of risk assessment and management at different stages. Audience: Students, engineers, and scientists in charge of developing new methodologies for hazard analysis and risk assessment; practitioners of environmental protection; local and governmental authorities charged with implementing environmental risk impact procedures and guidelines.
International environmental agreements have increased exponentially within the last five decades. However, decisions on policies to address key issues such as biodiversity loss, climate change, ozone depletion, hazardous waste transport and numerous other planetary challenges require individual countries to adhere to international norms. What have been the successes and failures in the environmental treaty-making arena? How has the role of civil society and scientific consensus contributed to this maturing process? Why have some treaties been more enforceable than others and which theories of international relations can further inform efforts in this regard? Addressing these questions with renewed emphasis on close case analysis makes this volume a timely and thorough postscript to the Rio-Plus 20 summit's celebrated invocation document, The Future We Want, towards sustainable development. Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating More Effective Global Agreements provides an accessible narrative on understanding the geopolitics of negotiating international environmental agreements and clear guidance on improving the current system. In this book, authors Lawrence Susskind and Saleem Ali expertly observe international environmental negotiations to effectively inform the reader on the geopolitics of protecting our planet. This second edition offers an additional perspective from the Global South as well as providing a broader analysis of the role of science in environmental treaty-making. It provides a unique contribution as a panoramic analysis of the process of environmental treaty-making. |
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