How do and how did people perceive, manage and respond to natural disasters? How are the causes of natural disasters explained in history, how are they explained today? This volume investigates relationships between forces of nature and human culture in a multidisciplinary context bridging science and the humanities.

"Forces of nature and cultural responses" is divided into four sections: (1) ball lightnings, (2) earthquakes and tsunamis, (3) volcanic eruptions and plagues, and (4) hurricanes and floodings. Specifically, Section 1 investigates theories and case studies of ball lightning phenomena. Section 2 includes a psychological study on the impact of earthquakes on academic performance, a study on tsunami vulnerability and recovery strategies in Thailand and a study on the social and economic aftermaths of a tsunami and a hurricane in Hawaii. Section 3 consists of a chapter on volcanic eruptions and plagues as well as cultural responses in Ancient Times and a study on contemporary vulnerability and resilience under chronic volcanic eruptions. Section 4 investigates the impact of hurricane Katrina on the current jazz scene in New Orleans and cultural responses to floodings in The Netherlands in Early Modern Times.

Organized around issues, debates and discussions concerning the various ways in which the concept of nature has been used, this book looks at how the term has been endlessly deconstructed and reclaimed, as reflected in anthropological, scientific, and similar writing over the last several decades. Made up of ten of Roy Ellen's finest articles, this book looks back at his ideas about nature and includes a new introduction that contextualizes the arguments and takes them forward. Many of the chapters focus on research the author has conducted amongst the Nuaulu people of eastern Indonesia.

Far from being an abnormal or infrequent activity, cannibalism is a naturally occurring behavior with far-reaching implications for the ecology, life history, and evolution of many species. This book offers the first detailed review of the subject, covering the contextual and taxonomic diversity of cannibalism, and explaining its costs, benefits and taxonomic consequences for a broad distribution of species from lower eukaryotes to higher primates. The authors explore the different varieties of cannibalism, including infanticide, mating and courtship rituals, gerontophagy, oophagy, and competitive interactions. They also assess the ecological and evolutionary causes and effects of cannibalistic behavior, using the theoretical tools successfully applied to the study of foraging behavior, sociality, demography, and genetics. These findings will interest a broad audience of ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and students of animal behavior.

Up until now, mountain ecosystems have not been closely studies by social scientists as they do not offer a readily defined set of problems for human exploitation as, do for instance, tropical forests or arctic habitats. But the archaeological evidence had shown that humans have been living in this type of habitat for thousands of year. From this evidence we can also see that mountainous regions are often frontier zones of competing polities and form refuge areas for dissident communities as they often are inherently difficult to control by centralized authorities. As a consequence they fuel or contribute disproportionately to political violence. But we are now witnessing changes and increasing vulnerability of mountain ecosystems caused by human activities. Human adaptability to mountain ecosystems. This volume presents an international and interdisciplinary account of the exploitation of - and human adaptation to - mountainous regions over time. The contributions discuss human cultural responses to key physical and cultural stressors associated with mountain ecosystems, such as aridity, quality of soils, steep slopes, low productivity, as well as transient phenomena such as changing weather patterns, deforestation and erosion, and the possible effects of climate change. This volume will be of interest to anthropologists, ecologists and geologists as mountainous landscapes change fast and cultures disappear and they need to be recorded, and mountain regions are of interest for studies on environmental change and cultural responses of mountain populations provide clues for us all. Critical to understanding mountain adaptations is our comprehension of human decision-making and how people view short- and long-term outcomes.

An Introduction to Emergency Exercise Design and Evaluation is designed to help practitioners and students of emergency management understand various aspects of the exercise design process. Emergency exercises are an important component of an organization's emergency planning and preparedness, yet few emergency managers and practitioners have training in designing or evaluating them. In this updated and practical handbook, author Robert McCreight explains the essential elements and core principles of exercise design and evaluation. This book focuses on natural disasters and technological emergencies that occur in communities of any size. It provides emergency planners, public health professionals, emergency managers, police officers, and fire fighters with an in-depth look at exercise design issues and an accessible guide to designing and evaluating emergency exercises.

In Spain, on May 15, 2011, a movement against austerity measures began. In a time when representative democracies were under threat, 15M came to life as a virtuous and democratic response to the slide into far-right populism and authoritarianism. More than a social movement, 15M became a mode of being with transformative, democratizing potential. In Democracy Here and Now, Pablo Ouziel offers a grounded analysis of 15M. At the time of the movement and during the ensuing encampments, Ouziel travelled extensively, speaking to participants, and keeping an ongoing record of his conversations. Presenting an original participatory mode of research, the book reveals six types of intersubjective, "joining hands" relationships that 15M has brought into being and works to carry on in creative ways. The book shows how the movement's way of being and temporality persists in Spain following the square occupations, while 15M citizens continue to learn and move forward in less perceptible ways. Democracy Here and Now sheds light on a deeply relational, intersectional, and eco-social mode of democracy, and shows how 15M's ongoing democratization practices are exemplary of similar grassroots movements around the world, broadening our understandings of what it means to be democratic in the here and now.

Ecological Form brings together leading voices in nineteenth-century ecocriticism to suture the lingering divide between postcolonial and ecocritical approaches. Together, these essays show how Victorian thinkers used aesthetic form to engage problems of system, interconnection, and dispossession that remain our own. The authors reconsider Victorian literary structures in light of environmental catastrophe; coordinate "natural" questions with sociopolitical ones; and underscore the category of form as a means for generating environmental-and therefore political-knowledge. Moving from the elegy and the industrial novel to the utopian romance, the scientific treatise, and beyond, Ecological Form demonstrates how nineteenth-century thinkers conceptualized the circuits of extraction and violence linking Britain to its global network. Yet the book's most pressing argument is that this past thought can be a resource for reimagining the present.

This two volume collection of pioneering material includes landmarks and significant contributions to the subjects of global environmental issues. The editors have prepared a new introduction for this authoritative collection.This collection enables the reader, whether an economist or environmentalist, to have access to material published in a wide range of journals, many of which are relatively unavailable. It will be of considerable value to researchers and teachers in all of the disciplines, including: theoretical ecology; resource and environmental economics; industrial ecology and environmental science.

Rural Water Systems for Multiple Uses and Livelihood Security covers the technological, institutional, and policy choices for building rural water supply systems that are sustainable from physical, economic, and ecological points-of-view in developing countries. While there is abundant theoretical discourse on designing village water supply schemes as multiple use systems, there is too little understanding of the type of water needs in rural households, how they vary across socio-economic and climatic settings, the extent to which these needs are met by the existing single use water supply schemes, and what mechanisms exist to take care of unmet demands. The case studies presented in the book from different agro ecological regions quantify these benefits under different agro ecological settings, also examining the economic and environmental trade-offs in maximizing benefits. This book demonstrates how various physical and socio-economic processes alter the hydrology of tanks in rural settings, thereby affecting their performance, also including quantitative criteria that can be used to select tanks suitable for rehabilitation.

In the coming decade, we may see the advent of multinational federalism on an international scale. As great powers and international organizations become increasingly uncomfortable with the creation of new states, multinational federalism is now an important avenue to explore, and in recent decades, the experiences of Canada and Quebec have had a key influence on the approaches taken to manage national and community diversity around the world. Drawing on comparative scholarship and several key case studies (including Scotland and the United Kingdom, Catalonia and Spain, and the Quebec-Canada dynamic, along with relations between Indigenous peoples and various levels of government), The Legitimacy Clash takes a fresh look at the relationship between majorities and minorities while exploring theoretical advances in both federal studies and contemporary nationalisms. Alain-G. Gagnon critically examines the prospects and potential for a multinational federal state, specifically for nations seeking affirmation in a hostile context. The Legitimacy Clash reflects on the importance of legitimacy over legality in assessing the conflicts of claims.

If we were to ask what is the root cause of our current and unprecedented environmental crisis, climate change, many, particularly on the progressive Left, would refer to the excesses of capitalism-and they'd be right. In Eco-Nihilism: The Philosophical Geopolitics of the Climate Change Apocalypse, Wendy Lynne Lee demonstrates that there are no versions of conquest capital compatible with the fact of a finite planet and that a logic whose operating premise is growth is destined to not only exhaust our planetary resources, but also generate profound social injustice and geopolitical violence in its pursuit. Nonetheless, it is clear that the violence and injustice of capital is selective-some benefit greatly while others are subjugated to its pathological drive to profit. Hence, Lee argues that any comprehensive analysis of what Jason Moore has dubbed the Capitalocene must include an equally probing account of human chauvinism, that is, the axes along which capital is supplied with resources and labor. Defined in terms of race, sex, gender, and species, these axes come ready-made to the advantage of capitalist commodification. Without an understanding of how and why, humanity will remain doomed to settling for a sustainably unjust world as opposed to realizing a just and desirable one. Indeed, on our current trajectory, we may not even achieve the sustainable. The introduction of climate change into the mix of environmental deterioration, the ever-widening economic gap between global North and global South, and the accelerating violence of terrorism, civil war, and human slavery make of a warming planet a combustible world. The only way out requires ending the myth of endless resources, a rejection of climate change denial, and a radical re-valuation of human-centeredness, not as a locus of power, but as an opportunity to take moral and epistemic responsibility for a world whose biotic diversity and ecological integrity make the struggle to realize it worthwhile. This solution demands not only an end to capitalism, but the deliberate reclamation of value-aesthetic, moral, and civic-and a radical transformation of both personal and collective conscience. Lee appeals to the experiential aesthetics of John Dewey and the feminist concept of the standpoint of the subjugated. She argues for a version of the precautionary principle informed by an environmentally and socially responsible concept of the desirable future as the clearest path away from the precipice.

Focuses on a much discussed and controversial aspect of conservation: the commodification of nature. Can the successful marketization of what is generally perceived as wilderness help to provide for biodiversity conservation, economic development and social emancipation? At a time of profound anxiety about the impact of human activity on nature and the catastrophic effects of climate change, the "sixth mass extinction", invasive species and rapidly expanding zoonotic diseases, this volume engages with the practices, discourses, and materialities surrounding the commodification of "the wild". Focusing on the relationship between commodification and wilderness, the contributors pay particular attention to commodification's newer iterations in which human management plays a significant role, such as wildlife-park tourism, trophy-hunting, and trade in herbal medicines, perfumes and luxury exotic food items. Dominant neoliberal approaches have aimed to address global environmental challenges through the commodification and marketization of nature: by valorizing nature, they claim, biodiversity can be safeguarded and "wild" landscapes protected. This, it is thought, will not only open up a new frontier of sustainable, non-exploitative, participatory capitalist expansion, but invigorate rural livelihoods, reduce poverty, and add important assets to otherwise vulnerable rural economies. This important book challenges this future trajectory. Investigating a broad range of cases across southern and eastern Africa, from the illegal sandalwood trade to legal trade in devil's claw and honeybush, to trophy-hunting and wilderness safaris, the contributors reveal the pitfalls and challenges of commodification, what this means for the continent and beyond. OPEN ACCESS: This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND

This book is a collection of essays about the interaction between God, humans, and nature in the context of the environmental challenges and Biblical studies. Chapters include topics on creation care and Sabbath, sacramental approaches to earth care, classical and medieval cosmologies, ecotheodicy, how we understand the problem of nonhuman suffering in a world controlled by a good God, ecojustice, and how humans help to alleviate nonhuman suffering. The book seeks to provide a way to understand Judeo-Christian perspectives on human-to-nonhuman interaction through Biblical, literary, cultural, film, and music studies, and as such, offers an interdisciplinary approach with emphasis on the humanities, which provides a broader platform for ecotheology.

Global city-thinking has, in the past years, had a very real pull on society. Global cities seem an unavoidable fact of everyday world affairs. This volume gathers a forum that integrates the extensive set of disciplinary dimensions to which the interdisciplinary concept of the global city can help to tackle the policy challenges of today's metropolises. Its chapters are drawn from viewpoints including the cultural, economic, historical, postcolonial, virtual, architectural, literary, security and political dimensions of global cities. Tasked with providing a rejoinder to the global city scholarship from each of these perspectives, the authors illustrate what twin analytical and practical challenges emerge from juxtaposing these stances to the concept of the 'global city'. They rely not solely on theory but also on sample case studies either drawn from long-lived global cities such as New York, Shanghai and London, or emerging metropolises like Dubai, Cape Town and Sydney.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and is freely available to read online. Crises pose an immediate risk to life, health, and the environment and require urgent action. The public's use of social media has important implications for contingency policies and practices. Social media have the potential for risk reduction and preventive interaction with the public. This book is about how different communicators - whether crisis managers, first responders, journalists, or private citizens and disaster victims - have used social media to communicate about risks and crises. It is also about how these very different actors can play a crucial role in mitigating or preventing crises. How can they use social media to strengthen their own and the public's awareness and understanding of crises when they unfold? How can they use social media to promote resilience during crises and the ability to deal with the after-effects? Chapters address such questions by presenting new research-based knowledge on social media use during different crises: the terrorist attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011; the central European floods in Austria in 2013; and the West African Ebola-outbreak in 2014. The collection also presents research on the development of a tool for gathering social media information, based on a user-centered design. Social Media use in Crisis and Risk Communication presents cutting-edge research on the use of social media in crisis communication and reporting. It gives recommendations about how different crisis communicators (information officers, crisis managers, journalists) can improve their ability to gather information, communicate and raise people's crisis awareness by using social media.

This book examines how institutional and environmental features in neighbourhoods can contribute to social resilience, highlighting the related socio-demographic issues, as well as the infrastructure, planning, design and policies issues. It is divided into three themes - infrastructure, planning, and community. Infrastructure examines how physical features such as parks and street patterns influence neighborliness and resilience, while planning studies how urban design enhances social interactions. Lastly, community discusses policies that can forge social bonds, either through racial integration, grassroots activities, or social service. Overall, the book combines research and empirical work with scholarly models of resilience and governance philosophy, focusing on Singapore's urban planning and social policies.

We are faced with the twin urgent challenges of delivering a low carbon and secure energy system. The last few years have seen Britain moving from being a net exporter to a net importer of energy. The threat of climate change has led to the slow but inexorable inclusion of environmental concerns in mainstream energy policy. Against this backdrop, economic and political power around the globe has altered, creating a complex, multipolar world. Rising concerns about the long term availability and price of oil, gas and uranium only add to the challenges facing Britain. This timely volume brings together key researchers and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines, including energy policy, international relations and supply chains, to explore the practical policy options in addressing energy security in Britain.

This book reviews the history, current state of knowledge, and different research approaches and techniques of studies on interactions between humans and plants in an important area of agriculture and ongoing plant domestication: Mesoamerica. Leading scholars and key research groups in Mexico discuss essential topics as well as contributions from international research groups that have conducted studies on ethnobotany and domestication of plants in the region. Such a convocation will produce an interesting discussion about future investigation and conservation of regional human cultures, genetic resources, and cultural and ecological processes that are critical for global sustainability.

Did you know that 62% of the food in our supermarkets is not only processed but 'ultra-processed' (ingredients from other foods are combined to make something 'new', often in colours that do not exist in nature) and that data shows that by eating this kind of food over time we are literally slowly poisoning ourselves?

In the hard-hitting, ground-breaking tradition of his NY Times bestseller FAT CHANCE, which revealed the dangers of sugar, Dr Robert Lustig persuasively presents a stark exposé of how our addiction to processed foods (aided and abetted by the food industry, big ag, big pharma, institutional medicine and the government) is behind the lethal increase in major non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, cancer and dementia. We have come to accept that these chronic diseases are simply part of the 'natural ageing process', but Dr Lustig makes the case that this is simply not true.

The solution on both a personal and societal level is a return to unprocessed food and Dr Lustig offers a doable plan for us to heal and restore our own health and wellbeing with real food, and in the process boosting our immunity to viruses like Covid-19.

Despite decades of efforts to combat homelessness, many people continue to experience it in Canada's major cities. There are a number of barriers that prevent effective responses to homelessness, including a lack of agreement on the fundamental question: what is homelessness? In Multiple Barriers, Alison Smith explores the forces that shape intergovernmental and multilevel governance dynamics to help better understand why, despite the best efforts of community and advocacy groups, homelessness remains as persistent as ever. Drawing on nearly 100 interviews with key actors in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal, as well as extensive participant observation, Smith argues that institutional differences across cities interact with ideas regarding homelessness to contribute to very different models of governance. Multiple Barriers shows that the genuine involvement of locally based service providers, with the development of policy, are necessary for an effective, equitable, and enduring solution to the homelessness crisis in Canada.

Is fair trade a radical movement aiming to transform global systems of production and exchange, or is it a marketing niche that delivers small benefits to Southern farmers and a clean conscience to Northern consumers? Schisms currently opening between the US-based Fair Trade USA and the rest of the international fair trade movement are reflective of this choice. This book evaluates the extent to which fair trade is likely to be a transformative movement. The authors show that fair trade's most significant, and threatened, contribution is its potential to reveal to otherwise 'blinded' consumers the qualitative aspects of labour and nature embodied in commodities. Integrating insights from economic and sociological theory and research, the book sheds new light on this potential of the movement, its role in producing social change, and, given the recent strategic trajectory of the movement, the serious problems it now faces.

Ranging across philosophy, theology, ecology, psychology, and art, in Dump Philosophy Michael Marder argues that the earth, along with everything that lives and thinks on it, is at an advanced stage of being converted into a dump for industrial output and its by-products feeding consumerism and its excesses. Every day, scientific studies, media reports, and first-hand accounts of the rapidly deteriorating state of the environment hit us with a growing and disconcerting force. Trends such as microplastics in water, airborne toxins, topsoil degradation, and dangerous levels of carbon dioxide have upset the delicate ecological balance that has until now been sustaining life on the planet. Marder's original treatise paints a portrait of the Anthropocene as a global dump which wreaks havoc, causing disease and degrading our sensation, perception, and thinking, so that nuance is lost and ideas are reduced to soundbites in chains of free association. Describing the dump's fundamental characteristics and its effects on the body and the mind, he contemplates wider physiological, social, economic, and environmental metabolisms in the age of dumping, as well as the role of philosophy caught in its crosshairs. While surveying the devastation that is the reality of the twenty-first century, the book provides a frightening and yet intellectually spellbinding glimpse of the future.

Policing Wildlife examines both the extent and enforcement of wildlife law, one of the fastest growing areas of crime globally. The book considers how enforcement regimes need to adapt to contemporary wildlife crime threats, particularly those posed by terrorism and organised crime.

Assessing and Measuring Environmental Impact and Sustainability answers the question what are the available methodologies to assess the environmental sustainability of a product, system or process? Multiple well known authors share their expertise in order to give a broad perspective of this issue from a chemical and environmental engineering perspective. This mathematical, quantitative book includes many case studies to assist you with the practical application of environmental and sustainability methods. You will also gain an understanding of how to efficiently assess and use these methods.

Prof. Klemes book summarizes all relevant environmental methodologies to assess the sustainability of a product and tools, in order to develop more green products or processes. The main methodology that is explored is life cycle assessment. This book should be of interest to any engineers interested in environmental impact and sustainability.
This practical guide will help engineers to assess, evaluate and measure sustainability in industry
Workable approaches to environmental and sustainability assessment are provided
You will come away with tools to assess the sustainability of a process or product and to design it in an environmental-friendly way"

What are the implications of climate change for twenty-first-century conflict and security? Rising temperatures, it is often said, will bring increased drought, more famine, heightened social vulnerability, and large-scale political and violent conflict; indeed, many claim that this future is already with us. Divided Environments, however, shows that this is mistaken. Focusing especially on the links between climate change, water and security, and drawing on detailed evidence from Israel-Palestine, Syria, Sudan and elsewhere, it shows both that mainstream environmental security narratives are misleading, and that the actual security implications of climate change are very different from how they are often imagined. Addressing themes as wide-ranging as the politics of droughts, the contradictions of capitalist development and the role of racism in environmental change, while simultaneously articulating an original 'international political ecology' approach to the study of socio-environmental conflicts, Divided Environments offers a new and important interpretation of our planetary future.