The extensive safety restrictions imposed globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic have brought significant changes to almost all environmental parameters. The largest pandemic of the century has left an indelible mark on all aspects of human life and the environment. This book revolves around COVID-19 and its influence on all biotic and abiotic components on earth, with a focus on the regulatory role of air quality during the pandemic, environmental toxicity and susceptibility to COVID-19, and the impact of the lockdown on different ecosystems. The book fundamentally explains the biology of SARS-CoV-2 and the pathophysiology and epidemiology of COVID-19. Dedicated chapters highlight the ongoing global cutting-edge research on COVID-19, control and safety measures, and public health concerns. COVID-19 and Emerging Environmental Trends: A Way Forward is aimed at graduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers in environmental and medical science, health and safety, and ecology. This book offers a multiperspective and multidisciplinary approach to the discussion of the pandemic as well as emerging environmental issues, current trends, and a way forward. As humanity stands face-to-face with the largest global crisis in recent times, this book helps readers to easily understand its various aspects from a beginner's perspective, without going into the intricate technicalities of medical science or environmental science, and beautifully juxtaposes critical issues with lucid language and flexible scientific explanations.

Highlighting the connections between climate change and human security, this book elucidates what might happen when a mere 10-degree drop in average temperature results in a sudden inability to produce enough food, when rapidly advancing desertification produces water scarcities where none existed before, and when newly frozen landscapes lead to more power plants for energy, resulting in increased air pollution. The destabilizing effects of these possibilities create many potential challenges for U.S. national security in a globalized world in which we may have to intervene militarily to safeguard our interests around the globe. In February 2004, a Pentagon report on climate change and its implication for national security received extraordinary attention and publicity. Public attention, however, focused almost exclusively on portents of inevitable doom and disaster—most particularly on a scenario outlining a possible future similar to a climate event of 8,200 years ago and its impact on the availability of food, energy, and water. This book offers a broad examination of the meaning of climate change and global warming while maintaining a strategic perspective on the implications of environmental effects on all forms of security—national, international, and human (transcending borders and having more to do with basic resources). Given the uncertainty surrounding climate change as a specific event, the authors argue for recognizing the profound social, political, and human impact that could take place in the coming years. While recognizing the inherent dangers of prediction, Liotta and Shearer effectively present the case that the time to not only recognize—but deal with—potentially profound outcomes is now.

The decisions a corporation makes affect more than just its stakeholders and can have wide social, environmental, and economic consequences. This facilitates a business environment built around the practical regulations and transparency necessary to ensure ethical and responsible business practice. Corporate Social Responsibility for Valorization of Organizations is a critical scholarly resource that examines organizational management through a new perspective that considers corporate social responsibility within the relationship between companies and society. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics, such as organizational innovation, corporate strategy, and cultural enterprises, this book is geared towards professionals, economists, students of business and finance, policy makers, and government agencies.

The increasingly widespread production of toxins by marine and freshwater microalgae raises serious concerns regarding seafood and drinking water safety. This book compiles studies on the influence of climate change on the spreading of toxin-producing species in aquatic systems. The chemistry and biology of toxin production is revised and an outlook on control and prevention of the toxins' impact on human and animal health is given.

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.

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.

Now available in English for the first time, Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess's meditation on the art of living is an exhortation to preserve the environment and biodiversity. As Naess approaches his ninetieth year, he offers a bright and bold perspective on the power of feelings to move us away from ecological and cultural degradation toward sound, future-focused policy and action. Naess acknowledges the powerlessness of the intellect without the heart, and, like Thoreau before him, he rejects the Cartesian notion of mind-body separation. He advocates instead for the integration of reason and emotion-a combination Naess believes will inspire us to make changes for the better. Playful and serious, this is a guidebook for finding our way on a planet wrecked by the harmful effects of consumption, population growth, commodification, technology, and globalization. It is sure to mobilize today's philosophers, environmentalists, policy makers, and the general public into seeking-with whole hearts rather than with superficial motives-more effective and timelier solutions. Naess's style is reflective and anecdotal as he shares stories and details from his rich and long life. With characteristic goodwill, wit, and wisdom, he denounces our unsustainable actions while simultaneously demonstrating the unsurpassed wonder, beauty, and possibility our world offers, and ultimately shows us that there is always reason for hope, that everyone is a potential ally in our fight for the future.

When American explorers crossed the Texas Panhandle, they dubbed it part of the ""Great American Desert."" A ""sea of grass,"" the llano appeared empty, flat, and barely habitable. Contemporary developments - cell phone towers, oil rigs, and wind turbines - have only added to this stereotype. Yet in this lyrical ecomemoir, Shelley Armitage charts a unique rediscovery of the largely unknown land, a journey at once deeply personal and far-reaching in its exploration of the connections between memory, spirit, and place. Armitage begins her narrative with the intention to walk the llano from her family farm thirty meandering miles along the Middle Alamosa Creek to the Canadian River. Along the way, she seeks the connection between her father and one of the area's first settlers, Ysabel Gurule, who built his dugout on the banks of the Canadian. Armitage, who grew up nearby in the small town of Vega, finds this act of walking inseparable from the act of listening and writing. ""What does the land say to us?"" she asks as she witnesses human alterations to the landscape - perhaps most catastrophic the continued drainage of the land's most precious resource, the Ogallala Aquifer. Yet the llano's wonders persist: dynamic mesas and canyons, vast flora and fauna, diverse wildlife, rich histories. Armitage recovers the voices of ancient, Native, and Hispano peoples, their stories interwoven with her own: her father's legacy, her mother's decline, a brother's love. The llano holds not only the beauty of ecological surprises but a renewed realization of kinship in a world ever changing. Reminiscent of the work of Terry Tempest Williams and John McPhee, Walking the Llano is both a celebration of an oft-overlooked region and a soaring testimony to the power of the landscape to draw us into greater understanding of ourselves and others by experiencing a deeper connection with the places we inhabit.

Sugarcane exhibits all the major characteristics of a promising bioenergy crop including high biomass yield, C4 photosynthetic system, perennial nature, and ratooning ability. Being the largest agricultural commodity of the world with respect to total production, sugarcane biomass is abundantly available. Brazil has already become a sugarcane biofuels centered economy while Thailand, Colombia, and South Africa are also significantly exploiting this energy source. Other major cane producers include India, China, Pakistan, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia, and the United States. It has been projected that sugarcane biofuels will be playing extremely important role in world's energy matrix in recent future. This book analyzes the significance, applications, achievements, and future avenues of biofuels and bioenergy production from sugarcane, in top cane growing countries around the globe. Moreover, we also evaluate the barriers and areas of improvement for targeting efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective biofuels from sugarcane to meet the world's energy needs and combat the climate change.

Mutualisms, interactions between two species that benefit both of them, have long captured the public imagination. Their influence transcends levels of biological organization from cells to populations, communities, and ecosystems. Mutualistic symbioses were crucial to the origin of eukaryotic cells, and perhaps to the invasion of land. Mutualisms occur in every terrestrial and aquatic habitat; indeed, ecologists now believe that almost every species on Earth is involved directly or indirectly in one or more of these interactions. Mutualisms are essential to the reproduction and survival of virtually all organisms, as well as to nutrient cycles in ecosystems. Furthermore, the key ecosystem services that mutualists provide mean that they are increasingly being considered as conservation priorities, ironically at the same time as the acute risks to their ecological and evolutionary persistence are increasingly being identified. This volume, the first general work on mutualism to appear in almost thirty years, provides a detailed and conceptually-oriented overview of the subject. Focusing on a range of ecological and evolutionary aspects over different scales (from individual to ecosystem), the chapters in this book provide expert coverage of our current understanding of mutualism whilst highlighting the most important questions that remain to be answered. In bringing together a diverse team of expert contributors, this novel text captures the excitement of a dynamic field that will help to define its future research agenda.

One of the earliest scientific works on all aspects of compost and manure. Still of value today, especially to those interested in organic agriculture. Howard is the author of the very ground breaking "An Agricultural Testament."

Tembeli is a beautiful island in Muzanga located somewhere in the heart of the Niger Delta, an island so lavishly blessed by nature with natural and material resources. The people lived in perfect harmony until Oilgate, a multinational Oil company struck its first oil well in Tembeli. Ever since then, things have never been the same in Tembeli.For long, the people found it themselves in a period of no peace. Faced with intimidation and marginalization by the military government of Muzanga, who felt that their crude oil revenue base was being threatened by Tembeli's outcry for environmental violations by Oilgate, the people vowed to defend their kingdom with the last drop of their blood. This is a story that was never told and will touch even a heart as cold as steel.

The book is designed to provide a review on the methods and current status of conservation of the tropical plant species. It will also provide the information on the richness of the tropical plant diversity, the need to conserve, and the potential utilization of the genetic resources. Future perspectives of conservation of tropical species will be discussed. Besides being useful to researchers and graduate students in the field, we hope to create a reference for a much wider audience who are interested in conservation of tropical plant diversity.

Industrial houses have, in recent years, begun to favor green products and financial institutions are funneling investible funds to environmentally friendly industries as a priority. Implementation of green policy to support these changes requires economic as well as political support from various influential countries. Success of green policies will inevitably benefit biodiversity and global environmental health. Economic and Political Implications of Green Trading and Energy Use is a scholarly research publication that presents global perspectives on the impact of green financing and accounting on the health of the environment while highlighting issues related to carbon trading, carbon credit, energy use, and energy efficiency and their impact on economic outputs. This reference features a range of topics including environmental policies and sustainable development and is essential for academicians, environmental scientists, policymakers, political scientists, students, and researchers.

After the 1998 flood of the Yangtze River, one of the world s most important rivers, environmental experts realized that, to control flooding, much more attention must be paid to vegetation cover on bare lands, thin forest land, and shrub-covered land in mountain areas. In 1999, an environmental monitoring project of the forests in 11 provinces of the Yangtze River basin was undertaken. This book reports on soil loss prediction and the successful practices of soil loss control in eastern China in recent years.

Many cities focused on tourist development and city marketing to keep their economies afloat during the financial crisis of 2008-2013, but the subsequent economic recovery saw a combination of growing visitor numbers, changing behavior patterns and price hikes, especially in real estate, that created the conditions for a 'perfect storm'. Anti-tourism protests have emerged and have even started to dominate the political debate in cities around the world, especially in Europe. Cities such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin and Lisbon have developed policies to mitigate the negative externalities of tourism growth for their residents. Jeroen Oskam's wide ranging work examines many of the most important issues in the debate on overtourism including: crowdedness and competition between tourists and locals in the use of city services displacement of services catering to locals by tourist amenities cultural or physical alienation protests against overtourism often associate the phenomenon with the presence of urban vacation rentals measures against overtourism, e.g. restrictions on short-term rentals, access restrictions, economic measures and reconducting tourist streams. The academic debate in this book spans multiple disciplines, such as Tourism, Geography, Urban Planning, Law and Economics. The approaches are equally varied: while many Tourism scholars try to save or justify tourism growth, Urban Planners may preferably seek to prevent gentrification, to minimize tourism externalities and to 'return' the city to its residents. The purpose of this book is to include the different positions in the debate; to give insight in the potential future evolution of the phenomenon; to propose policies and strategies and to identify underlying mechanisms of the massification of travel.

There are various innovations and new technologies being produced in the energy, transportation, and building industries to combat climate change and improve environmental performance, but another way to combat this is examining the world's food resources. Currently, there are global challenges associated with livestock and meat consumption, giving way to resource scarcity and the inability to sustain animal agriculture. Environmental, Health, and Business Opportunities in the New Meat Alternatives Market is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the development of plant-based foods and nutritional outcomes. Through analyzing innovative and disruptive trends in the food industry, it presents opportunities utilizing meat alternatives to create a more engaged consumer, a stronger economy, and a better environment. Highlighting topics such as meat consumption, nutrition, health, and gender perspectives, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, economists, health professionals, nutritionists, technology developers, academicians, and graduate-level students.