A collection of essays on the ecology, biodiversity, and restoration of the Texas Hill Country. For most of five decades, evolutionary biologist David Hillis has studied the biodiversity of the Texas Hill Country. Since the 1990s, he has worked to restore the natural beauty and diversity of his Mason County ranch, the Double Helix. In his excursions around his ranch and across the Edwards Plateau, Hillis came to realize how little most people know about the plants and animals around them or their importance to our everyday lives. He began thinking about how natural history is connected to our enjoyment of life, especially in a place as beautiful and beloved as the Hill Country, which, not coincidentally, happens to be one of the most biodiverse parts of Texas. Featuring short nontechnical essays accompanied by vivid color photos, Armadillos to Ziziphus is a charming and casual introduction to the environment of the region. Whether walking the pasture with his Longhorn cattle, explaining the ecological significance of microscopic organisms in springtime mud puddles, or marveling at the local Ziziphus (aka Lotebush, a spiny shrub), Hillis guides first-time visitors and long-term residents alike in an appreciation for the Hill Country’s natural beauty and diversity.

Drawing on the Pakistan Earthquake Reconstruction and Recovery Project (PERRP), this volume explores the sociocultural side of post-disaster infrastructure reconstruction. As the latter is often fraught with delays and even abandonment-one cause being ineffective interactions between construction and local people-PERRP used anthropological and participatory approaches. Along with strong construction management, such approaches led to the rebuilding being completed on time. As disasters are increasing in number and intensity, so too will be the need for reconstruction, for which PERRP has lessons to offer.

This comprehensive overview of the first quarter-century of American environmental sociology introduces readers to the research and theoretical perspectives in this new field of study. Formally established in 1976 with the formation of the American Sociological Association's Section on Environmental Sociology, the field emerged in response to widespread societal recognition of the significance of environmental problems in the 1970s and has flourished ever since. Focusing on both built and natural environments, this volume provides overviews of key topics in both branches of the field, summarizing and synthesizing existing research in each area.

Although this volume pays ample attention to theoretical perspectives in environmental sociology, it also provides thorough reviews of research on the central topics in the field. Contributors introduce and consider the current work available in such areas as the design of built environments, hazards and disasters, risks, the environmental movement, and impact assessment, among others. This timely and important collection is a must-read for students and scholars specializing in environmental sociology, social ecology, environmental studies, and urban and regional planning.

Human-induced climate change is causing resource scarcities, natural disasters, and mass migrations, which in turn destabilize national, international, and human security structures and multiply the human inputs to climate change. Alarms about the expanding role of climate change as a force multiplier of existing threats to national, international, and human security structures studies are being raised at all levels of governance and intelligence—national (including the U.S. Senate, the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon), transnational (including the European Union and the United Nations), and private (such as the Central News Agency and the American Security Project). Climate Change and Security: A Gathering Storm of Global Challenges focuses on the three major feedback effects of human-induced climate change on human and international security—resource scarcity, natural disasters, and sea-level rise. Decreasing per capita availability of renewable resources due to such regional effects of climate change as drought and desertification leads to intensified competition for these resources and may result in armed violence—especially when compounded by conditions of rapid population growth, tribalism, and sectarianism, as in Darfur and Somalia. The increase in the frequency and intensity of meteorological disasters associated with global warming weakens already debilitated tropical societies and makes them still more vulnerable to political instability, as in Haiti. Sea-level rise will lead to disruptive mass migrations of climate refugees as dense littoral populations are forced to abandon low-lying coastal regions, as in Bangladesh.

The sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction is one of the most pervasive issues of our time. Animals, Plants and Afterimages brings together leading scholars in the humanities and life sciences to explore how extinct species are represented in art and visual culture, with a special emphasis on museums. Engaging with celebrated cases of vanished species such as the quagga and the thylacine as well as less well-known examples of animals and plants, these essays explore how representations of recent and ancient extinctions help advance scientific understanding and speak to contemporary ecological and environmental concerns.

On March 11, 2011, a tsunami warning was issued for Tonga in Polynesia. On the low and small island of Kotu, people were unperturbed in the face of impending catastrophe. The book starts out from the puzzle of peoples' responses and reactions to this warning as well as their attitudes to a gradual rise of sea level and questions why people seemed so unconcerned about this and the accompanying loss of land. The book is an ethnography of the relationship between people and their environment based on fieldwork over three decades.

This volume characterizes the current state of natural science and socioeconomic modeling of the impacts of climate change and current climate variability on forests, grasslands, and water. It identifies what can be done currently with impact assessments and suggests how to undertake such assessments. Impediments to linking biophysical and socioeconomic models into integrated assessments for policy purposes are identified, and recommendations for future research activities to improve the state of the art and remove these impediments to model integration are provided. This book is for natural and social scientists with an interest in the impacts of climate change on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and their socioeconomic impacts, and policy makers interested in understanding the status of current assessment capabilities and in identifying priority areas for future research.

Why do people living in different areas vote in different ways? Why does this change over time? How do people talk about politics with friends and neighbours, and with what effect? Does the geography of well-being influence the geography of party support? Do parties try to talk to all voters
at election time, or are they interested only in the views of a small number of voters living in a small number of seats? Is electoral participation in decline, and how does the geography of the vote affect this? How can a party win a majority of seats in Parliament without a majority of votes in
the country? Putting Voters in their Place explores these questions by placing the analysis of electoral behaviour into its geographical context. Using information from the latest elections, including the 2005 General Election, the book shows how both voters and parties are affected by, and seek to
influence, both national and local forces. Trends are set in the context of the latest research and scholarship on electoral behaviour. The book also reports on new research findings.

This edited collection critically engages with an important but rarely-asked question: what is energy for? This starting point foregrounds the diverse social processes implicated in the making of energy demand and how these change over time to shape the past patterns, present dynamics and future trajectories of energy use. Through a series of innovative case studies, the book explores how energy demand is embedded in shared practices and activities within society, such as going to music festivals, cooking food, travelling for business or leisure and working in hospitals. Demanding Energy investigates the dynamics of energy demand in organisations and everyday life, and demonstrates how an understanding of spatiality and temporality is crucial for grasping the relationship between energy demand and everyday practices. This collection will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of energy, climate change, transport, sustainability and sociologies and geographies of consumption and environment. Chapters 1 and 15 of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

Coasts and Estuaries: The Future provides valuable information on how we can protect and maintain natural ecological structures while also allowing estuaries to deliver services that produce societal goods and benefits. These issues are addressed through chapters detailing case studies from estuaries and coastal waters worldwide, presenting a full range of natural variability and human pressures. Following this, a series of chapters written by scientific leaders worldwide synthesizes the problems and offers solutions for specific issues graded within the framework of the socio-economic-environmental mosaic. These include fisheries, climate change, coastal megacities, evolving human-nature interactions, remediation measures, and integrated coastal management. The problems faced by half of the world living near coasts are truly a worldwide challenge as well as an opportunity for scientists to study commonalities and differences and provide solutions. This book is centered around the proposed DAPSI(W)R(M) framework, where drivers of basic human needs requires activities that each produce pressures. The pressures are mechanisms of state change on the natural system and Impacts on societal welfare (including well-being). These problems then require responses, which are the solutions relating to governance, socio-economic and cultural measures (Scharin et al 2016).

This topical and engaging Handbook brings together cutting edge research on the relationship between happiness and the natural environment. With interdisciplinary contributions from top scholars, it explores the role of happiness research as a new approach to environmental social science, illustrating the critical links between human wellbeing, happiness and the environment. Addressing key environmental issues that impact happiness, the book examines: climate change and extreme weather events, air pollution, noise, odour, access to green space, and the importance of green lifestyles. This wide range of environmental concerns is analysed through the lens of differing cultural backgrounds, exploring the importance of different forms of human interaction with the environment globally, as well as its effects. Environmental economics and sociology scholars will find the key case studies discussed particularly useful in assessing different cultural, political and regional approaches to the topic. It will also be an interesting read for policy-makers looking to better understand how the environment affects human happiness and wellbeing. Contributors include: M. Ahmadiani, M. Berlemann, F. Brereton, L. Bruni, X. Chen, C.A. Coral-Guerrero, S. Ferreira, H. Folmer, B.S. Frey, D. Fujiwara, F. Garcia-Quero, I. Gramatki, J. Guardiola, P. Howley, B.A. Jones, K. Kagohashi, S. Kant, K. Keohane, C. Krekel, K. Laffan, R. Lawton, A. Levinson, G. MacKerron, D. Maddison, S. Managi, M. Moro, S. Mourato, A. Oswald, J. Regner, K. Rehdanz, H. Ren, T. Ruckelshauss, J. Tang, T. Tsurumi, J. Tutt, R. Veenhoven, I. Vertinsky, H. Welsch, X. Zhang, X. Zhang, B. Zheng

In recent decades, practices like the cultivation of a few high-yielding crop varieties on a large scale, the application of heavy machinery and continued mechanization of agriculture, the removal of natural habitats, and the application of pesticides and synthetics have resulted in the simplification of agro-ecosystems. This has enabled a substantial increase in food production but has at the same time transformed landscapes. Indeed, there is a concern that a decline in biodiversity has affected microbiome activities that support processes across soils, plants, animals, the marine environment, and humans. Although they have increased food production, the above practices cannot be considered sustainable in long-term applications. Biodiversity, Functional Ecosystems, and Sustainable Food Production explore ecosystems in terms of crop and animal production, pest and disease control, nutrient cycling, and soil fertility. Chapters range from agro-biodiversity to antimicrobial use in animal food production to microbiome applications for sustainable food systems and the impacts of environment-friendly unit operations on the functional properties of bee pollen. By examining such topics about each other, the text emphasizes how food production, ecosystem function, food quality, and consumer health are all interconnected.

How to Make A Wetland tells the story of two Turkish coastal areas, both shaped by ecological change and political uncertainty. On the Black Sea coast and the shores of the Aegean, farmers, scientists, fishermen, and families grapple with livelihoods in transition, as their environment is bound up in national and international conservation projects. Bridges and drainage canals, apartment buildings and highways-as well as the birds, water buffalo, and various animals of the regions-all inform a moral ecology in the making. Drawing on six years of fieldwork in wetlands and deltas, Caterina Scaramelli offers an anthropological understanding of sweeping environmental and infrastructural change, and the moral claims made on livability and materiality in Turkey, and beyond. Beginning from a moral ecological position, she takes into account the notion that politics is not simply projected onto animals, plants, soil, water, sediments, rocks, and other non-human beings and materials. Rather, people make politics through them. With this book, she highlights the aspirations, moral relations, and care practices in constant play in contestations and alliances over environmental change.

Although poisonous substances have been a hazard for the whole of human history, it is only with the development and large-scale production of new chemical substances over the last two centuries that toxic, manmade pollutants have become such a varied and widespread danger. Covering a host of both notorious and little-known chemicals, the chapters in this collection investigate the emergence of specific toxic, pathogenic, carcinogenic, and ecologically harmful chemicals as well as the scientific, cultural and legislative responses they have prompted. Each study situates chemical hazards in a long-term and transnational framework and demonstrates the importance of considering both the natural and the social contexts in which their histories have unfolded.

One of the world's leading scholars of religious trends shows how climate change has driven dramatic religious upheavals. Long before the current era of man-made climate change, the world has suffered repeated, severe climate-driven shocks. These shocks have resulted in famine, disease, violence, social upheaval, and mass migration. But these shocks were also religious events. Dramatic shifts in climate have often been understood in religious terms by the people who experienced them. They were described in the language of apocalypse, millennium, and Judgment. Often, too, the eras in which these shocks occurred have been marked by far-reaching changes in the nature of religion and spirituality. Those changes have varied widely - from growing religious fervor and commitment; to the stirring of mystical and apocalyptic expectations; to waves of religious scapegoating and persecution; or the spawning of new religious movements and revivals. In many cases, such responses have had lasting impacts, fundamentally reshaping particular religious traditions. In Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith historian Philip Jenkins draws out the complex relationship between religion and climate change. He asserts that the religious movements and ideas that emerge from climate shocks often last for many decades, and even become a familiar part of the religious landscape, even though their origins in particular moments of crisis may be increasingly consigned to remote memory. By stirring conflicts and provoking persecutions that defined themselves in religious terms, changes in climate have redrawn the world's religious maps, and created the global concentrations of believers as we know them today. This bold new argument will change the way we think about the history of religion, regardless of tradition. And it will demonstrate how our growing climate crisis will likely have a comparable religious impact across the Global South.

The Earth's climate is changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilisation through human-induced global warming, yet public reactions to this scientific truth remain dissonant. Inspired by a 2019 conference, Moana Water of Life, this book showcases the challenges and potential fruits of an open dialogue between stakeholders to navigate the critical challenges to planetary health caused by the climate crisis. Inviting participants to contribute 'in their own voices', this book cuts across real-life insights, ranging from researchers from the Pacific Islands Region on the front line of devastating water surpluses and shortages, to the thoughts of leading climate change and Earth scientists, social scientists, educators, faith leaders, theologians and activists who are offering practical solutions to the problem. By highlighting this collection of inspiring stories at the local and global levels, the authors offer a vision of hope for communities in the future to communicate, adapt to change and ultimately resist further deterioration of the planet's health. All royalties from this book are being donated to the Red Cross in the Pacific Island Region.

Few terms elicit such strong and varied feelings and yet have so little clarity as "democracy." Leaders of large states use "democracy" to designate their nations' public character even as critics and rivals use the term to validate their own political perspectives. In Envisioning Democracy, the editors and contributors address the following questions: What does democracy mean today? What could it mean tomorrow? What is the dynamic of democracy in an increasingly interdependent world? Envisioning Democracy explores these questions amid the dynamic of democracy as a political phenomenon interacting with forms of economic, ethical, ethnic, and intellectual life. The book draws on the work of Sheldon S. Wolin (1922-2015), one of the most influential American theorists of the last fifty years. Here, scholars consider the historical conditions, theoretical elements, and practical impediments to democracy, using Wolin's insights as touchstones in thinking through the possibilities and obstacles facing democracy now and in the future.

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.

This new critical volume presents various perspectives on teaching and teacher education in the face of the global climate crisis, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Teaching in the Anthropocene calls for a reorientation of the aims of teaching so that we might imagine multiple futures in which children, youths, and families can thrive amid a myriad of challenges related to the earth's decreasing habitability.Referring to the uncertainty of the time in which we live and teach, the term Anthropocene is used to acknowledge anthropogenic contributions to the climate crisis and to consider and reflect on the emotional responses to adverse climate events. The text begins with the editors' discussion of this contested term and then moves on to make the case that we must decentre anthropocentric models in teacher education praxis. The four thematic parts include chapters on the challenges to teacher education practice and praxis, affective dimensions of teaching in the face of the global crisis, relational pedagogies in the Anthropocene, and ways to ignite the empathic imaginations of tomorrow's teachers. Together the authors discuss new theoretical eco-orientations and describe innovative pedagogies that create opportunities for students and teachers to live in greater harmony with the more-than-human world. This incredibly timely volume will be essential to pre- and in-service teachers and teacher educators. FEATURES: Offers critical reflections on anthropocentrism from multiple perspectives in education, including continuing education, educational organization, K-12, post-secondary, and more Includes accounts that not only deconstruct the disavowal of the climate crisis in schools but also articulate an ecosophical approach to education Features discussion prompts in each chapter to enhance student engagement with the material

The concept of fragmentation is explored in this book as it applies to arid, pastoral systems throughout the world. Global significance of the world's vast rangelands is large. Arid and semiarid rangelands make up almost 25% of the earth's landscapes and support more than 20 million people whose livelihoods depend on these lands. It is the home of the planet's last remaining megafauna and many other important species. The case is developed that fragmentation arises from different natural, social and economic conditions worldwide but creates similar outcomes for human and natural systems. With information from nine sites around the world the authors examine how fragmentation occurs, the patterns that result, and the consequences of fragmentation for ecosystems and the people who depend on them for their livelihoods.

The Stockholm Conference of 1972 drew the world's attention to the global environmental crisis, but for people in Sweden the threat was nothing new. Anyone who read the papers or watched the television news was already familiar with the issues. Five years early, in the summer of 1967, the situation was very different. So what happened in between? This book explores the 'environmental turn' that took place in Sweden in the late-1960s. This radical change, the realisation that human beings were in the process of destroying their own environment, had major and far-reaching consequences. What was it that opened people's eyes to the crisis? When did it happen? Who set the ball rolling? These are some of the questions the book addresses, shedding new light on the history of environmentalism. An electronic version of this book is available under a creative commons licence: manchesteropenhive.com/view/9789198557749/9789198557749.xml -- .

From the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's resistance against the Dakota Access pipeline to the Nepalese Newar community's protest of the Fast Track Road Project, Indigenous peoples around the world are standing up and speaking out against global capitalism to protect the land, water, and air. By reminding us of the fundamental importance of placing Indigenous politics, histories, and ontologies at the center of our social movements, Indigenous Resurgence positions environmental justice within historical, social, political, and economic contexts, exploring the troubling relationship between colonial and environmental violence and reframing climate change and environmental degradation through an anticolonial lens.

"Sustainable Justice and the Community" is an attempt to locate justice in a workable and sustainable way within the community, introducing 'Sustainable Justice' as a key concept for the coming century. This volume is a critical examination of three key concepts which need to be understood for the management of today's flexible and fluid society, namely Sustainability, Justice and Community. Within this study, we seek to explore both through an analysis built from their original philosophical understandings, through to their contemporary usage and application, ultimately developing new understandings through a combination of the essential thematic notions underpinning these salient concepts.

Contemporary megaprojects have evolved from the discreet, modernist projects undertaken in the past by centralized authorities to encompass everything from large-scale construction to space exploration. Contemporary Megaprojects explores how these projects have been impacted by cutting-edge technology, the private sector, and the processes of decentralization and dematerialization. With case studies ranging from mega-plantations in Southeast Asia to ocean mapping to sports events, the contributions in this collected volume demonstrate the increasing ambition and pervasiveness of these projects, as well as their significant impact on both society and the environment.

Reviewing current policies and practices, the book assesses the financial, economic and physical risk of building in hazardous areas, and looks at how societies approach economic development while trying to create a more resilient built environment in spite of the dangers. It examines the vulnerability of economic and social infrastructure to natural hazard events, looks at policies which imperil infrastructure, and proposes new development approaches to be undertaken by sovereign states, international development banks, NGOs, and bilateral aid agencies.