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Books > Earth & environment > The environment
Despite the urgent need for action, there is a widespread lack of
understanding of the benefits of using green energy sources for not
only reducing carbon emissions and climate change, but also for
growing a sustainable economy and society. Future citizens of the
world face increasing sustainability issues and need to be better
prepared for energy transformation and sustainable future economic
development. Cases on Green Energy and Sustainable Development is a
critical research book that focuses on the important role renewable
energy and energy efficiency play in energy transition and
sustainable development and covers economic and promotion policies
of major renewable energy and energy-efficiency technologies.
Highlighting a wide range of topics such as economics, energy
storage, and transportation technologies, this book is ideal for
environmentalists, academicians, researchers, engineers,
policymakers, and students.
This book is an original study of the challenge of implementing
sustainable development in Western democracies. It highlights the
obstacles which sustainable development presents for strategic
governance and critically examines how these problems can best be
overcome in a variety of different political contexts.The renowned
international contributors, including leading policy experts, try
to identify the forms of governance necessary to realize the
functions of sustainable development. With the help of detailed
case studies, they document and analyze specific governance
mechanisms for pursuing and achieving this aim. They move on to
offer clearly formulated conclusions on the relationship between
the demands of sustainable development and the current norms and
practices of Western democracy. The book also raises the
fundamental question of whether change can ever be achieved if the
overriding goal of development is not firmly stated as
'sustainability' rather than 'business as usual'. This book offers
a balanced focus on the difficulties and successes of promoting
sustainable development through strategic governance. It will be of
particular relevance to those interested in the institutional
mechanisms of governance and policy implementation. The book will
also appeal to scholars and students of political science,
organizational studies and business administration, and
policymakers and NGOs directly involved in the task of implementing
sustainable development.
In Santa Barbara's Legacy: An Environmental History of
Huancavelica, Peru, Nicholas A. Robins presents the first
comprehensive environmental history of a mercury producing region
in Latin America. Tracing the origins, rise and decline of the
regional population and economy from pre-history to the present,
Robins explores how people's multifaceted, intimate and often toxic
relationship with their environment has resulted in Huancavelica
being among the most mercury-contaminated urban areas on earth. The
narrative highlights issues of environmental justice and the toxic
burdens that contemporary residents confront, especially many of
those who live in adobe homes and are exposed to mercury, as well
as lead and arsenic, on a daily basis. The work incorporates
archival and printed primary sources as well as scientific research
led by the author.
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.
Hemingway and Ecocriticism focuses on the famous author's short
stories from ecocritical perspectives, which are concerned with the
relationship between humans and the landscape and plead for a
better understanding of nature. Of Hemingway's first 49 short
stories, 22 exhibit ecological concerns in some form or other. They
reveal great damage caused to nature and human beings alike. G.
Srilatha holds that while Hemingway was an unabashed hunter,
fisher, and sportsman, he was also a conservationist and conveyed
this attitude in most of his stories. Many show that human and
biological environments are mutually interdependent. Despite
ecological devastation, Hemingway's protagonists turn to nature to
escape from the trauma of war and to seek solace.
The capybara is the neotropical mammal with the highest potential
for production and domestication. Amongst the favorable
characteristics for domestication we can list its high prolificacy,
rapid growth rate, a herbivorous diet, social behavior and relative
tameness. The genus (with only two species) is found from the
Panama Canal to the north of Argentina on the east of the Andes.
Chile is the only country in South America where the capybara is
not found. The species is eaten all over its range, especially by
poor, rural and traditional communities engaged in subsistence
hunting. On the other hand, in large urban settlements wildlife is
consumed by city dwellers as a delicacy. The sustainable management
of capybara in the wild has been adopted by some South American
countries, while others have encouraged capybara rearing in
captivity.
Translation of the principle of sustainable development into policy
and practice, and the evaluation of the outcomes of these strategic
interventions, are some of the most pressing challenges facing
policymakers in Europe and beyond. The chapters in this book
contribute to the debate surrounding these challenges. By exploring
the conceptual and methodological issues relating to the evaluation
of sustainable development and analysing European practice and
experience, this work provides a coherent and integrated
contribution to our understanding of these issues. With
contributions from a distinguished international group of authors,
this book will be of interest to researchers, policy analysts and
practitioners in the area of impact assessment and sustainable
development.
This book looks at the question of what makes for successful change
in developing countries. It focuses on people at every level in six
developing countries in Africa and Asia who have helped foster
positive change and development, most of which has been successful.
Here, in contrast to so much academic writing on development which
focuses on leadership alone, the author tries to get beyond that
elite focus and highlight the people at all levels who make change
possible. He examines the role and significance of these ordinary
citizens and groups as well as leaders. Transformation almost
always requires action and support at multiple levels from
individuals, communities, and local leaders. The project analyses
the cases of Afghanistan, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Ghana,
Pakistan, and South Africa.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open
Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.
From New Orleans to New York, from London to Paris to Venice, many
of the world's great cities were built on wetlands and swamps.
Cities and Wetlands is the first book to explore the literary and
cultural histories of these cities and their relationships to their
environments and buried histories. Developing a ground-breaking new
mode of psychoanalytic ecology and surveying a wide range of major
cities in North America and Europe, ecocritic and activist Rod
Giblett shows how the wetland origins of these cities haunt their
later literature and culture and might prompt us to reconsider the
relationship between human culture and the environment. Cities
covered include: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hamburg, London, New
Orleans, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Venice and
Washington.
The core objective of this book is to better understand the role of
foreign policy - the crossovers and interactions between domestic
and international politics and policies - in efforts to preserve
the environment and natural resources. Underlying this objective is
the belief that it is not enough to analyze domestic or
international political actors, institutions and processes by
themselves. We need to understand the interactions among them,
something that explicit thought about foreign policy can help us
do. The eclectic group of contributors explore European and EU
responses to global climate change, and provide insights into
issues on environmental protection, sustainable development,
international affairs and foreign policy.
This collection features four peer-reviewed literature reviews on
soil health indicators. The first chapter describes indicators and
frameworks for soil health currently in use. It evaluates the
principles underpinning current approaches to monitoring soil
quality/health and shows these principles have been applied in the
development of a practical soil health toolkit for use by UK
farmers. The second chapter reviews the range of physical, chemical
and biological indicators of soil health and how they can be used
in practice. It focusses on measuring soil health in organic
vegetable cultivation and, in particular, ways of measuring the
effects of adding organic amendments to improve soil health. The
third chapter discusses key issues in soil organic carbon (SOM)
modelling and the development of increasingly sophisticated,
dynamic SOM models. It looks at the role of SOM models in improving
soil health monitoring and developing decision support tools for
farmers The final chapter reviews current challenges in collecting
more systematic and reliable data on earthworm communities,
including issues in identifying different earthworm groups. It
includes a case study on developing a robust method for accurate
measurement of earthworm communities in soil in assessing and
improving soil health.
Economical energy supply is vital for a country's financial
success, and factors such as price, continuity, environmental
pollution and the country's own energy resources are important
contributors. Multidimensional Strategic Outlook on Global
Competitive Energy Economics and Finance analyses current trends in
energy production and use, with a focus on technological
developments that contribute to the reduction of price in energy
production and renewable energy sources that provide continuity in
energy production and do not emit carbon into the atmosphere.
Expanding on the current literature, this book focuses purely on
current issues that can increase energy efficiency, while proposing
strategies to use energy more effectively and efficiently. The
strategies presented in this book will be a significant guide to
both academics and industry professionals.
In this important and original interdisciplinary work, well-known
environmental philosopher Eric Katz explores technology's role in
dominating both nature and humanity. He argues that technology
dominates, and hence destroys, the natural world; it dominates, and
hence destroys, critical aspects of human life and society.
Technology causes an estrangement from nature, and thus a loss of
meaning in human life. As a result, humans lose the power to make
moral and social choices; they lose the power to control their
lives. Katz's argument innovatively connects two distinct areas of
thought: the fundamental goal of the Holocaust, including Nazi
environmental policy, to heal the degenerate elements of society;
and the plan to heal degraded natural systems that informs the
contemporary environmental policy of 'ecological restoration'. In
both arenas of 'healing,' Katz argues that technological forces
drive action, while domination emerges as the prevailing ideology.
Katz's work is a plea for the development of a technology that does
not dominate and destroy but instead promotes autonomy and
freedom.Anne Frank, a victim of Nazi ideology and action, saw the
titular tree behind her secret annex as a symbol of freedom and
moral goodness. In Katz's argument, the tree represents a free and
autonomous nature, resistant to human control and domination. Anne
Frank's Tree is rooted in an empirical approach to philosophy,
seating complex ethical ideas in an accessible and powerful
narrative of historical fact and deeply personal lived experience.
"Evaluating Environmental and Social Impact Assessment in
Developing Countries" is" "a valuable reference book for
practitioners and researchers conducting research in and developing
studies on environmental science and management and environmental
and social impact assessment. The book s authors have developed and
tested a new framework to evaluate environmental impact assessment
(EIA) systems that may be adopted by most developing countries with
EIA experience. Application of this framework will help determine
if the EIA is achieving its intended goal of sustainable
development in these countries. It also explains the reasons behind
the strengths and weaknesses from which the development
practitioners and international development partners can take
lessons. This book will help the reader answer such questions as
"What are the best forms of public participation?" and "How do we
measure contributions to EIA procedure?" since it is based on
direct experiences from a developing country that is struggling
with many of these issues. "Evaluating Environmental and Social
Impact Assessment in Developing Countries" provides further
understanding of appropriate tools to evaluate environmental and
social impacts of development initiatives especially in developing
countries.
- Demonstrates the development of an integrated holistic method
that presents new research in the field
- Offers a thorough analytical assessment of an EIA system in a
developing country
- Presents valuable insights into how developing countries are
coping with the new phenomenon of public participation and
involvement in environmental decision making and what methods and
techniques have been successful
- Includes a chapter on social impact assessment in developing
countries with special focus on Bangladesh, providing valuable
information applicable to developing countries"
Developing countries as the nations of Indian subcontinent are
experiencing big-bangs regarding their economic, agricultural and
industrial development. The sole aim of present mechanized and
advanced agricultural practices is to produce enhanced grain yield
to satiate the hunger of burgeoning population. Thus the present
scenario demands the use of chemical fertilizers and other
agrochemicals. However the production cost of these chemical
products is to high as it increases pressure on the fossils fuel
reserves of the country. Bioinoculants are the culture
concoctions/live microbial isolates that are presently the most
ecologically feasible and economically sound example of practical
reproduction of lab experimentation for the help of modern day
farmeBroadly, bioinoculants include biofertilzers, biopesticides
and organic decomposers. Biofertilizers are live cells of
beneficial microbial isolates that provide necessary nutrients
nitrogen, phosphorous etc, excrete growth promoting compounds and
provide resistance to a variety of diseases that culminates to
enhanced yield and production. While biopesticides are live
microbial isolates or their metabolic products that eradicate/kill
known insects/pests of crops. Among commercialized biopesticides Bt
cotton emerged as the first brand ambassador of modern day
pesticides. The third component of bioinoculants are the organic
decomposers that include certain fungal species, bacterial genera
and actinomycetes that hasten decomposition of organic compounds
and make available nutrients held as organic matter.
There is a lot of confusion in alternative agricultural systems
being promoted in India and elsewhere. Though , a large amount of
valuable information is generated, it is very much scattered and
becomes difficult to the readers to locate them under one roof.
Hence, in this book an attempt has been made to compile and present
the available information on sustainable agriculture under various
chapte The book is sub-divided into nine s which starts with an
introductory picture covering the scope, need and meaning of
sustainable agriculture. It gives the readers a clean understanding
of the definition of the term sustainable and its usage in a
broadened horizon. Owing to its systematic, in-depth and critical
arrangement of the valuable information , upon completing the book,
the reader will have a feeling of an enrichment of his knowledge in
the field of sustainable agriculture in its right perspective.
This book covers the multidisciplinary nature of environment,
public awareness case studies related to environment, current
issues environment and natural changes. The book includes disaster
management, mitigation and application of Remote Sensing and GIS
for disaster management and environmental changes. It also consists
of drawing a long-term policy to overcome the problems of
environmental pollution and disaster management. The other
important environmental issues that are highlighted are
environmental impact assessment studies, environmental health
hazards and ecological consequences in relation to the
inter-linking of rivers in India. The issues of natural disasters
includes landslides, flood and flood control, earthquakes and
tsunamis. The book is useful for students and researchers of
various disciplines like biology, microbiology, environment,
ecology, pedology, geology, geography, hydrologists, remote sensing
experts, social sciences, etc and others who are concerned with
environment and disaster management. The whole book is divided into
2 parts including 30 chaptePart I covers environmental changes:
their causes, impacts and assessment and part II highlights natural
disasters: mitigation and management and other related aspects.
This book explores frontier work at the intersection of
experimental and environmental economics, with cutting edge
research provided by premier scholars in the field. The book begins
by focusing on improving benefit - cost analysis, which remains the
hallmark of public policy decision-making around the globe. The
contributors provide innovative avenues to credibly lead to more
efficient policies. These insights should prove to be fundamental
components of the valuation process. They then explore, in a myriad
clever ways, important aspects associated with optimal resource use
and regulation of resources. Clearly, these issues remain of utmost
importance, both in a positive and normative sense, therefore the
authors offer a good introduction to some of these issues and
present logical solutions. A discussion of behavioural economics
and non-market valuation is also provided. Students and
policymakers will find Using Experimental Methods in Environmental
and Resource Economics of great interest.
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