"How do urban communities in Asian cities experience the impacts of urbanisation and climate change? This book throws light on the ongoing processes of rapid urban transformation in many cities in developing countries, with particular reference to cities such as Chennai in India. Due to increasing demands on infrastructures and urban services, cities in developing countries are often pushed to the edge of collapse even when not in times of disaster. While such cities try to implement measures to safeguard the well-being of their citizens, looming impacts of climate change such as increasingly frequent and intense natural hazards pose new and additional challenges to their urban communities. This book connects critical issues relating to the general functioning of cities with climate-related disasters with the concept of resilience. Furthermore, this research takes a pro-solution stance, and demonstrates that individuals can form collective power to deliver added value before, during and after a disaster. The concept of resilience is applied to determine whether an urban community would be affected or damaged during a climate-related disaster, and to what extent."

Discover how to fight extinction and become a #2minutesuperhero. Have you got 2 minutes? Of course you have! Get ready to team up with some of world's rarest animals. Together we can fight extinction and save the earth's wildlife by speaking up and changing what we eat, how we travel and the things we buy. Find out how you can become a #2minutesuperhero by completing 60 fun missions at home, school and in your community that can help the planet and save the animals at risk of extinction. Informative, practical and positive, this guide for children is written by Martin Dorey, anti-plastic campaigner and author of the bestselling No. More. Plastic, and is the founder of the Beach Clean Network and the #2minutebeachclean movement. He believes that every voice matters on this urgent issue.

Environments, landscapes, and ecological systems are often seen as fundamental by archaeologists, but how they relate to society is understood in very different ways. The chapters in this book take environment, culture, and technology together. All have been the focus of much attention; often one or other has been seen as the starting point for analysis, but this volume argues that it is the study of the inter-relationships between these three factors that offers a way forward. The contributions to this book pick up different strands within the tangled web of intersections between environment, technology, and society, providing a series of case studies which explore facets of this common theme in different settings and circumstances and from different perspectives. As well as addressing themes of theoretical and methodological interest, these case studies draw on primary research dealing with time periods from the late Pleistocene glacial maximum to the very recent past, and involve societies of very different types. Running through all the contributions, however, is a concern with the archaeological record and the ways in which scales of observation and availability of evidence affect the development of questions and explanations. The diversity of the chapters in this volume demonstrates the inherent weakness in any attempt to prioritise environment, technology, or society. These three factors are all embedded in any human activity, as change in one will result in change in the others: social and technical changes alter relations with the environment-and indeed the environment itself-and as environmental change drives changes in society and technology. As this book shows, it is possible to consider the relationship between the three factors from different perspectives, but any attempt to consider one or even two in isolation will mean that valuable insights will be missed.

As the Earth's oil supply runs out, and the effects of climate change threaten nations and their populations, the search for carbon-neutral sources of energy becomes more important and increasingly urgent. This book focuses on solutions to the energy problem, and not just the problem itself. It describes the major energy-generation technologies currently under development, and provides an authoritative summary of the current status of each one. It stresses the need for a balanced portfolio of alternative energy technologies. Certain solutions will be more appropriate than others in particular locations, due to the differences in availability of natural resources such as solar, wind, wave, tidal and geothermal. In addition, nuclear options (both fission and fusion), as well as technologies such as fuel cells, photovoltaics, artificial photosynthesis and hydrogen (as an energy carrier), all have a potential role to play. A state-of-the-art critique of energy efficiency in building design is also included. Each chapter is written by an acknowledged international expert and provides a non-technical overview of the competing and complementary approaches to energy generation.
Broad in scope and comprehensive in treatment, Energy..beyond Oil provides an authoritative synthesis of the scientific and technological issues which are essential to the survival of the human race in the near future. The book will be of interest and use to graduate students and researchers in all areas of energy studies, and will also be highly useful for policy-makers and professionals in the environmental sector as well as a more general readership who wish to learn more about this extremely topical subject.

Capitalism is destroying our planet, but like most social progress in the last two centuries, ecological justice can only be achieved through working-class struggle. In Workers of the Earth, Stefania Barca uncovers the environmental history and political ecology of labour to shed new light on the potentiality of workers as ecological subjects. Taking an ecofeminist approach, this ground-breaking book makes a unique contribution to the emerging field of environmental labour studies, expanding the category of labour to include waged and unwaged, industrial and meta-industrial workers. Going beyond conventional categories of ‘production’ and ‘reproduction’ as separate spheres of human experience, Barca offers a fresh perspective on the place of labour in today’s global climate struggle, reminding us that the fight against climate change is a fight against capitalism.

Research in environmental justice reveals that low-income and minority neighborhoods in our nation's cities are often the preferred sites for landfills, power plants, and polluting factories. Those who live in these sacrifice zones are forced to shoulder the burden of harmful environmental effects so that others can prosper. "Mountains of Injustice "broadens the discussion from the city to the country by focusing on the legacy of disproportionate environmental health impacts on communities in the Appalachian region, where the costs of cheap energy and cheap goods are actually quite high. Through compelling stories and interviews with people who are fighting for environmental justice, "Mountains of Injustice "contributes to the ongoing debate over how to equitably distribute the long-term environmental costs and consequences of economic development.

This timely and accessible book explores the links between politics, learning and sustainability. Its central focus is the future of people and the planet itself. The challenges that we face in combatting climate change and building a more sustainable world are complex and the book argues that if we are to successfully meet these challenges we need a fundamental change in the way we do politics and economics, embedding a lifelong commitment to sustainability in all learning. We have no option but to make things work for the better. After all, planet earth is the only home we have! The book will be important reading for academics and students in a variety of related subjects, including politics, public policy, education, sustainable development, geography, media, international relations and development studies. It will also be a valuable resource for NGOs and policy makers.

The global agenda of Nature conservation has led to the creation of the Masoala National Park in Madagascar and to an exhibit in its support at a Swiss zoo, the centerpiece of which is a mini-rainforest replica. Does such a cooperation also trigger a connection between ordinary people in these two far-flung places? The study investigates how the Malagasy farmers living at the edge of the park perceive the conservation enterprise and what people in Switzerland see when looking towards Madagascar through the lens of the zoo exhibit. It crystallizes that the stories told in either place have almost nothing in common: one focuses on power and history, the other on morality and progress. Thus, instead of building a bridge, Nature conservation widens the gap between people in the North and the South.

Winner, 2019 Science Fiction & Technoculture Studies Book Prize Radical Botany excavates a tradition in which plants participate in the effort to imagine new worlds and envision new futures. Modernity, the book claims, is defined by the idea of all life as vegetal. Meeker and Szabari argue that the recognition of plants' liveliness and animation, as a result of scientific discoveries from the seventeenth century to today, has mobilized speculative creation in fiction, cinema, and art. Plants complement and challenge notions of human life. Radical Botany traces the implications of the speculative mobilization of plants for feminism, queer studies, and posthumanist thought. If, as Michael Foucault has argued, the notion of the human was born at a particular historical moment and is now nearing its end, Radical Botany reveals that this origin and endpoint are deeply informed by vegetality as a form of pre- and posthuman subjectivity. The trajectory of speculative fiction which this book traces offers insights into the human relationship to animate matter and the technological mediations through which we enter into contact with the material world. Plants profoundly shape human experience, from early modern absolutist societies to late capitalism's manipulations of life and the onset of climate change and attendant mass extinction. A major intervention in critical plant studies, Radical Botany reveals the centuries-long history by which science and the arts have combined to posit plants as the model for all animate life and thereby envision a different future for the cosmos.

Is it possible for individuals to tackle waste by recycling, reusing and reducing alone? This provocative book critically analyses the widespread assumption that individuals and households have created our global waste crisis. Sociologist and waste expert Myra J. Hird reveals neoliberal capitalism's fallacy of infinite growth as the real culprit, and demonstrates how industry and local governments work in tandem to deflect our attention away from the real causes of our global waste problem. Hird offers crucial insights into the relations between waste and wider societal issues including ongoing (settler) colonialism, poverty, racism and sexism, and showcases how sociology may provide solutions through a 'pubic imagination' of waste.

* This is a revised edition of Colin Mason's "The 2030 Spike," that received the following acclaim: * "A bold, thought-provoking and ultimately rewarding [read], well-researched, full of ideas and thus a good, all-round primer on the stateof the planet." -- BBC Wildlife* "An impressive tour of our current world: from sexual slavery to sailing ships, from malaria to microcredits, from nanotechnology toneopaganism, all the horrors and promises of our troubled Zeitgeist seem to be reflected here." -- Resurgence* "Only the foolhardy would surely dare leave it unread on the shelf." -- International AffairsHas the future a future? Are we bringing history to an end? If we look at any one of several individual but critical trends, it would appear that history might have only a short way to run.This book describes the seven natural and human-made drivers that will converge around the year 2030 and wreak havoc: depleted fuel suppliesmassive population growth povertyglobal climate changefaminegrowing water shortagesinternational lawlessness.In this compelling book, Colin Mason explains in clear and irrefutable terms what is going on-largely below the surface of our daily or weekly news bulletins. The picture he paints is stark, and yet it is not bleak. Being forewarned, we are forearmed, and he draws on his own extensive political experience to describe how much we can do as individuals, and above all collectively, not merely to avert crisis but to engineer thoroughgoing change that can usher in genuinely sustainable and valuable alternatives to the way we live now.

Interlacing varied approaches within Historical Ecology, this volume offers new routes to researching and understanding human-environmental interactions and the heterarchical power relations that shape both socioecological change and resilience over time. Historical Ecology draws from archaeology, archival research, ethnography, the humanities and the biophysical sciences to merge the history of the Earth's biophysical system with the history of humanity. Considering landscape as the spatial manifestation of the relations between humans and their environments through time, the authors in this volume examine the multi-directional power dynamics that have shaped settlement, agrarian, monumental and ritual landscapes through the long-term field projects they have pursued around the globe. Examining both biocultural stability and change through the longue duree in different regions, these essays highlight intersectionality and counterpoised power flows to demonstrate that alongside and in spite of hierarchical ideologies, the daily life of power is heterarchical. Knowledge of transtemporal human-environmental relationships is necessary for strategizing socioecological resilience. Historical Ecology shows how the past can be useful to the future.

Children often fare the worst when communities face social and environmental changes. The quality of food, water, affection and education that children receive can have major impacts on their subsequent lives and their potential to become engaged and productive citizens. At the same time, children often lack both a private and public voice, and are powerless against government and private decision-making. In taking a child rights-based approach to sustainable development, this volume defines and identifies children as the subjects of development, and explores how their rights can be respected, protected and promoted while also ensuring the economic, social and environmental sustainability of our planet.

Ambitious measures to reduce carbon emissions are all too rare in reality, impeded by economic and political concerns rather than technological advances. In this collection of essays, Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth A. Stanton show that the impact of inaction on climate change will be far worse than the cost of ambitious climate policies.

After setting out the basic principles which must shape contemporary climate economics, Ackerman and Stanton consider common flaws in climate change policy from mistaken assumptions that dismiss the welfare of future generations and anticipate little or no growth in low-income countries, to unrealistic projections of climate damages that dismiss catastrophic risks and offer their own insightful remedies. They question the usefulness of conventional integrated assessment models (IAMs) that model the long-term interaction between economic growth and climate change, and propose an alternative in their Climate and Regional Economics and Development (CRED) model.

In this incisive work, Stanton and Ackerman offer a timely and original contribution to the fields of climate economics and global equity."

This book examines the domain of human agency-environment interaction from a multidimensional point of view. It explores the human-environment interface by analysing its ethical, political and epistemic aspects - the value aspects that humans attribute to their environment, the relations of power in which the actions and their consequences are implicated and the meaning of human actions in relation to the environment. The volume delineates the character of this domain and works out a theoretical framework for the field of human ecology. This book will be a must-read for students, scholars and researchers of environmental studies, human ecology, development studies, environmental history, literature, politics and sociology. It will also be useful to practitioners, government bodies, environmentalists, policy makers and NGOs.

This book examines the domain of human agency-environment interaction from a multidimensional point of view. It explores the human-environment interface by analysing its ethical, political and epistemic aspects - the value aspects that humans attribute to their environment, the relations of power in which the actions and their consequences are implicated and the meaning of human actions in relation to the environment. The volume delineates the character of this domain and works out a theoretical framework for the field of human ecology. This book will be a must-read for students, scholars and researchers of environmental studies, human ecology, development studies, environmental history, literature, politics and sociology. It will also be useful to practitioners, government bodies, environmentalists, policy makers and NGOs.

The twin categories of the state and nature collectively embody some of the most fundamental reference points around which our lives and thinking are organized. Despite their combined significance, however, the complex relationships that exist between modern states and nature remain under-theorized and are relatively unexplored. Through a detailed study of different sites, moments, and framing strategies The Nature of the State challenges the ways in which geographers and social scientists approach the study of state-nature relations. The authors analyse different instances of state-nature interaction from all over the world, considering the geo-politics of resource conflicts, the operation of natural history museums, the organizational practices of environmental departments and ministries, the regulation of genetic science, and contemporary forms of state intervention within issues of climate change. Introducing original research into the different institutional, spatial, and temporal strategies used by states to frame the natural world this book provides a critical overview of the latest political and ecological theories and addresses a wide range of pressing socio-environmental debates.

Environmental Anthropology studies historic and present human-environment interactions. This volume illustrates the ways in which today's environmental anthropologists are constructing new paradigms for understanding the multiplicity of players, pressures, and ecologies in every environment, and the value of cultural knowledge of landscapes. This Handbook provides a comprehensive survey of contemporary topics in environmental anthropology and thorough discussions on the current state and prospective future of the field in seven key sections. As the contributions to this Handbook demonstrate, the subfield of environmental anthropology is responding to cultural adaptations and responses to environmental changes in multiple and complex ways. As a discipline concerned primarily with human-environment interaction, environmental anthropologists recognize that we are now working within a pressure cooker of rapid environmental damage that is forcing behavioural and often cultural changes around the world. As we see in the breadth of topics presented in this volume, these environmental challenges have inspired renewed foci on traditional topics such as food procurement, ethnobiology, and spiritual ecology; and a broad new range of subjects, such as resilience, nonhuman rights, architectural anthropology, industrialism, and education. This volume enables scholars and students quick access to both established and trending environmental anthropological explorations into theory, methodology and practice.

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.

Environmental harms exert a significant toll and pose substantial economic costs on societies around the world. Although such harms have been studied from both legal and social science perspectives, these disciplinary-specific approaches are not, on their own, fully able to address the complexity of these environmental challenges. Many legal approaches, for example, are limited by their inattention to the motivations behind environmental offences, whereas many social science approaches are hindered by an insufficient grounding in current legislative frameworks. This edited collection constitutes a pioneering attempt to overcome these limitations by uniting legal and social science perspectives. Together, the book's contributors forge an innovative socio-legal approach to more effectively respond to, and to prevent, environmental harms around the world. Integrating theoretical and empirical work, the book presents carefully selected illustrations of how legal and social science scholarship can be brought together to improve policies. The various chapters examine how a socio-legal approach can ultimately lead to a more comprehensive understanding of environmental harms, as well as to innovative and effective responses to such environmental offences.

Nautilus Award Gold Medal Winner, Ecology & Environment In Matter and Desire, internationally renowned biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber rewrites ecology as a tender practice of forging relationships, of yearning for connections, and of expressing these desires through our bodies. Being alive is an erotic process-constantly transforming the self through contact with others, desiring ever more life. In clever and surprising ways, Weber recognizes that love-the impulse to establish connections, to intermingle, to weave our existence poetically together with that of other beings-is a foundational principle of reality. The fact that we disregard this principle lies at the core of a global crisis of meaning that plays out in the avalanche of species loss and in our belief that the world is a dead mechanism controlled through economic efficiency. Although rooted in scientific observation, Matter and Desire becomes a tender philosophy for the Anthropocene, a "poetic materialism," that closes the gap between mind and matter. Ultimately, Weber discovers, in order to save life on Earth-and our own meaningful existence as human beings-we must learn to love.

The clock is relentlessly ticking! Our world teeters on a knife-edge between a peaceful and prosperous future for all, and a dark winter of death and destruction that threatens to smother the light of civilization. Within 30 years, in the 2030 decade, six powerful 'drivers' will converge with unprecedented force in a statistical spike that could tear humanity apart and plunge the world into a new Dark Age. Depleted fuel supplies, massive population growth, poverty, global climate change, famine, growing water shortages and international lawlessness are on a crash course with potentially catastrophic consequences. In the face of both doomsaying and denial over the state of our world, Colin Mason cuts through the rhetoric and reams of conflicting data to muster the evidence to illustrate a broad picture of the world as it is, and our possible futures. Ultimately his message is clear; we must act decisively, collectively and immediately to alter the trajectory of humanity away from catastrophe. Offering over 100 priorities for immediate action, The 2030 Spike serves as a guidebook for humanity through the treacherous minefields and wastelands ahead to a bright, peaceful and prosperous future in which all humans have the opportunity to thrive and build a better civilization. This book is powerful and essential reading for all people concerned with the future of humanity and planet earth.

As global economic and population growth continues to skyrocket, increasingly strained resources have made one thing clear: the desperate need for an alternative to capitalism. In Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Real Utopia, Hans Baer outlines the urgent need to reevaluate historical definitions of socialism, commit to social equality and justice, and prioritize environmental sustainability. Democatic eco-socialism, as he terms it, is a system capable of mobilizing people around the world, albeit in different ways, to prevent on-going human socio-economic and environmental degradation, and anthropogenic climate change.