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Books > Earth & environment > The environment
"Curlews give their liquid, burbling call, a call of pure
happiness, the music of the fells." Ella Pontefract, 1936,
Wensleydale The North of England abounds with beauty, from
unspoiled beaches in Northumberland to the dramatic Lakeland Fells,
for so long celebrated by writers and artists. Wide estuaries,
winding rivers, sheer cliffs, rushing waterfalls, ancient woodland,
limestone pavements, and miles of hedgerows and drystone walls
sustainably built and rebuilt over centuries - all form part of its
rich heritage. But these are, too, contested and depleted
landscapes. Today the curlew's call is isolated, and many other
species are in decline. Industry, urban sprawl and climate chaos
threaten our environment on a previously unimagined scale. And
while stereotypes persist - of dark satanic mills or "bleak"
moorland - the imperative of conservation is all too often
overlooked for short-term economic interests. This essential volume
reminds us how and why Northern people have risen to the challenge
of defending their open spaces, demanding action on pollution and
habitat loss. Contemporary writers including Sarah Hall, Lee
Schofield, Benjamin Myers and Lemn Sissay take their place
alongside those who wrote in previous centuries. Together, the
voices in this one-of-a-kind anthology testify that North Country
is a place apart.
A major issue that has remained prevalent in today's modern world
has been the presence of chemicals within water sources that the
public uses for drinking. The associated health risks that
accompany these contaminants are unknown but have sparked serious
concern and emotive arguments among the global community. Empirical
research is a necessity to further understand these contaminants
and the effects they have on the environment. Effects of Emerging
Chemical Contaminants on Water Resources and Environmental Health
is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on
current issues regarding the occurrence, toxicology, and abatement
of emerging contaminants in water sources. While highlighting
topics such as remediation techniques, pollution minimization, and
technological developments, this publication explores sample
preparation and detection of these chemical contaminants as well as
policy and legislative issues related to public health. This book
is ideally designed for environmental engineers, biologists, health
scientists, researchers, students, and professors seeking further
research on the latest developments in the detection of water
contaminants.
Most livestock in the United States currently live in cramped and
unhealthy confinement, have few stable social relationships with
humans or others of their species, and finish their lives by being
transported and killed under stressful conditions. In Livestock,
Erin McKenna allows us to see this situation and presents
alternatives. She interweaves stories from visits to farms,
interviews with producers and activists, and other rich material
about the current condition of livestock. In addition, she mixes
her account with pragmatist and ecofeminist theorizing about
animals, drawing in particular on John Dewey's account of
evolutionary history, and provides substantial historical
background about individual species and about human-animal
relations. This deeply informative text reveals that the animals we
commonly see as livestock have rich evolutionary histories,
species-specific behaviors, breed tendencies, and individual
variation, just as those we respect in companion animals such as
dogs, cats, and horses. To restore a similar level of respect for
livestock, McKenna examines ways we can balance the needs of our
livestock animals with the environmental and social impacts of
raising them, and she investigates new possibilities for humans to
be in relationships with other animals. This book thus offers us a
picture of healthier, more respectful relationships with livestock.
Protecting the natural environment and promoting environmental
sustainability have become important objectives for U.S.
policymakers and public administrators at the dawn of the
twenty-first century. Institutions of American government,
especially at the federal level, and the public administrators who
work inside of those institutions, play a crucial role in
developing and implementing environmental sustainability policies.
This book explores these salient issues logically. First, it
explores fundamental concepts such as what it means to be
environmentally sustainable, how economic issues affect
environmental policy, and the philosophical schools of thought
about what policies ought to be considered sustainable. From there,
it focuses on processes and institutions affecting public
administration and its role in the policy process. Accordingly, it
summarizes the rise of the administrative state in the United
States and then reviews the development of federal environmental
laws and policies with an emphasis on late twentieth century
developments. This book also discusses the evolution of American
environmentalism by outlining the history of the environmental
movement and the growth of the environmental lobby. Finally, this
book synthesizes the information to discuss how public
administration can promote environmental sustainability.
This unique book explores a wide range of environmental issues
centered on the Middle-East and North Africa region, where
environmental degradation and impacts of climate change are known
to be more critical than in others parts of the world. Extensive
country analyses are supported by references to the economic
literature on regulation and incentives, and encompass recent
trends in environmental management modes and policy orientations.
The topical chapters include a critical review of environmental
policies with a focus on economic incentives on various
environmental issues including irrigation water, air pollution,
solid waste management and the impact of climate change and
fisheries. The book combines econometric applications, theoretical
models of regulation, and policy-oriented economic analyses with
fundamental recommendations for policymakers. Economic Incentives
and Environmental Regulation will attract a wide spectrum of
audiences including academics, researchers, practitioners,
students, and policymakers. Contributors: H. Abou-Ali, M.H.
Babiker, A.R. Darwish, E. Deutsch, C. Dridi, M.A. Fehaid, V.I.
Grover, L. Huang, M. Jeuland, N. Khraief, A.A. Kubursi, B. Larsen,
D. Maradan, U.R. Sumaila, A. Thomas, K. Zein
The world’s economy is fuelled by energy. Depletion of resources
and severe environmental effects resulting from the continuous use
of fossil fuels has motivated an increasing amount of interest in
renewable energy resources and the search for sustainable energy
policies. This volume contains research papers presented at the 9th
International conference on Energy and Sustainability. The changes
required to progress from an economy mainly focussed on
hydrocarbons to one taking advantage of sustainable renewable
energy resources require considerable scientific research, as well
as the development of new engineering systems. Energy policies and
management are of primary importance to achieve the development of
sustainability and need to be consistent with recent advances in
energy production and distribution. In many cases, the challenges
lie as much in the conversion from renewable energies (wind, solar,
etc.) to useful forms (electricity, heat, fuel) at an acceptable
cost including damage to the environment as in the integration of
these resources into the existing infrastructure. The diverse
topics covered by the papers in this book involve collaboration
between different disciplines in order to arrive at optimum
solutions, including studies of materials, energy networks, new
energy resources, storage solutions, waste to energy systems, smart
grids and many others. These research papers put a focus on
sustainability across the multidisciplinary components of urban
planning, the challenges presented by the increasing size of
cities, the number of resources required and the complexity of
modern society.
Sustainability issues have gained more importance in contemporary
globalization, pushing decision makers to find a systematic
mathematical approach to conduct analyses of this real-world
problem. The growing complexity in modern social-economics or
engineering environments or systems has forced researchers to solve
complicated problems by using multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM)
approaches. However, traditional MCDM research mainly focuses on
reaching the highest economic value or efficiency, and issues
related to sustainability are still not closely explored. Advanced
Multi-Criteria Decision Making for Addressing Complex
Sustainability Issues discusses and addresses the challenges in the
implementation of decision-making models in the context of green
and sustainable engineering, criteria identification,
quantification, comparison, selection, and analysis in the context
of manufacturing, supply chain, transportation, and energy sectors.
All academic communities in the areas of management, economics,
business sciences, mechanical, and manufacturing technologies are
able to use, apply, and implement the models presented in this
book. It is intended for researchers, manufacturers, engineers,
managers, industry professionals, academicians, and students.
Significant growth in economic activity in the Arctic has added
weight to the argument that projects must be developed responsibly
and sustainably. Addressing growing concerns regarding the
exploitation of the Arctic's natural resources, this timely book
presents and evaluates examples of best practice in Arctic
environmental impact assessment. Timo Koivurova and Pamela Lesser
succinctly synthesise primary data gathered from interviews with
local communities, indigenous peoples, NGOs, government officials
and businesses in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Greenland, Iceland,
Canada, Russia and the USA. Considering all stakeholder
perspectives, they present the regulatory processes of all eight
Arctic countries, and also provide helpful flowcharts that depict
the process graphically for each country. Measuring these practices
against the 1997 Guidelines for Environmental Impact Assessment in
the Arctic, the only Arctic environmental impact assessment
guidance document that has been officially approved by the
ministers of all eight Arctic countries, this book identifies key
areas where adherence to best practice is high, such as stakeholder
outreach and development, as well as those areas that fall short.
Thorough and accessible, Environmental Impact Assessment in the
Arctic will provide an excellent reference for academics in the
fields of law and environmental studies as well as for government
officials and stakeholders who stand to benefit from best practice.
Over the last five centuries, North-East England's River Tyne went
largely with the flow as it rode with us on a rollercoaster from
technologically limited early modern oligarchy, to large-scale
Victorian 'improvement', to twentieth-century deoxygenation and to
twenty-first-century efforts to expand the river's biodiversity. By
studying five centuries of Tyne conservatorship, we can see that
1855 to 1972 was a blip on the graph of environmental concern,
preceded and followed by more sustainable engagement and a fairer
negotiation with the river's forces and expressions as a whole and
natural system, albeit driven by different motivations. Even during
this blip, however, many people expressed environmental concern.
Several organisations, including the Tyne Salmon Conservancy
(1866-1950), local governors, the Tyne's anglers and the Standing
Committee on River Pollution's Tyne Sub-Committee (1921-1939),
tried to protect the river's environmental health from harm, as
they perceived it. This Tyne study offers a template for a future
body of work on British rivers that shakes off the straitjacket of
the Thames as the river of choice in British environmental history.
And it undermines traditional socio-cultural approaches which
reduce rivers to passive backdrops of human activities. Departing
from progressive narratives that equated change with improvement,
and declensionist narratives that equated change with loss and
destruction, it moves away from morally loaded notions of better or
worse, and even dead, rivers. This book refocuses on the production
of new and different rivers and fully situates the Tyne's fluvial
transformations within their political, economic, cultural, social
and intellectual contexts. Let us sit with the Tyne itself, some of
its salmon, a seventeenth-century Tyne River Court Juror, some
nineteenth-century Tyne Improvement Commissioners, a 1920s
biologist, a twentieth-century Tyne angler, shipbuilder and council
planner and some twenty-first-century Tyne Rivers Trust volunteers.
What would they disagree about? Would they agree on anything? How
would they explain their conceptualisation of what the river is for
and how it should be used and regulated? This book takes you to the
heart of such virtual debates to revive, reconnect and reinvigorate
the severed bonds and flows linking riparian places, issues and
people across five centuries. By analysing the Tyne's past
conservatorships, we can objectify ourselves through our
descendants' eyes, reconnecting us not only to our past, but also
to our future.
In the first study to examine F. W. J. Schelling's political
thought, Velimir Stojkovski not only unearths a neglected dimension
of the influential thinker's philosophy but further shows what it
can teach us about our ethical and political responsibilities
today. Unlike Hegel or Fichte, Schelling never wrote a political
treatise. Yet by reconstructing the portions of such works as The
New Deductions of Natural Right that deal explicitly with the
political and by thematically rethinking parts of his writings that
have a clear repercussion on politics - in particular those on
nature, freedom and religion - this book reveals the centrality of
politics to his oeuvre. Revisiting his corpus in this way,
Stojkovski uncovers a number of ways we can learn from Schelling
and his reception. He examines how Schelling's views on nature can
clarify our moral and political obligations to the non-human world
and further demonstrates how the separation of ontology as first
philosophy from the ethico-political has resulted in a fragmented
view of the status of the political subject and thus the body
politic. Forcefully renouncing this fragmentation, Stojkovski
explores how the same divide has contributed to the ongoing
political turmoil in Europe and America. Combining an exploration
of German Idealism with contemporary concerns, this is an essential
study that will introduce readers to a new Schelling: a political
thinker for the 21st century.
Innovatively rethinking the discipline of political economy, Fred
P. Gale builds on a range of contemporary examples to develop a
pluralistic conception of sustainability value that underpins
sustainable development. He identifies why current approaches are
having no meaningful impact and unifies diverse perspectives into
one integrative approach. This definitive work argues that
sustainability value?s realization requires a complete rethink of
the way firms and polities are governed, challenging the idea that
preferences are rational. Treating sustainability value as
supervening on four other elemental economic values, the book
illustrates how '?tetravaluation?' is being partially realized at
the level of the firm and the state. With vast differences in
institutional requirements across conventional liberal, nationalist
and socialist frameworks, Gale implores political economy to
abandon its monistic modernist legacy and embrace the pluralistic,
reflexive and interdisciplinary standpoint that sustainability
demands. With striking implications for existing political,
economic and cultural institutions, Gale offers a new perspective
on generating better policy outcomes for public policy
professionals and sustainability practitioners. This book is a
must-read for public policy theorists, political and ecological
economists, and environmental policy researchers, as Gale
challenges the conventional ideas linked to the functioning of
liberal democracy and explores the future of political economic
thought.
This book addresses the important issues of food security and
sustainability of natural resources of India in the context of the
projected climate change. Agroecosystems being the sites of intense
interaction between human beings and natural world, global climate
change is likely to affect the resource base, the crop
productivity, input use efficiency and overall the profitability of
agricultural production systems to a great extent. However, the
adverse effects of climate change can be alleviated through
mitigation and adaptation strategies which carry importance due to
the increasing population and food demand in India. Thus, this
compilation covers possible sources and sinks of greenhouse gases
in Indian context including the potentials of soil carbon
sequestration, crop pest and soil management and scientific
livestock management as mitigation and adaptation options. This
book also includes some topics on fundamentals of green house
effect and the possible mechanisms by which soil nutrient
availability alters due to CO2 fertilization. The schematic
diagrams, tables and graphs have been included to make the book
more illustrative. The likelihood of carbon credits and trading
through best management practices can help Indian farmers earning
carbon credits in future. The book is useful for researchers, farm
managers, policy makers and also students engaged in climate change
related studies.
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