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.

This is an overview of the use of waste materials in highway construction. It presents a summary of practices in the use of waste materials in highway construction and the experiences of the US in the technical, environmental, and economic aspects of the various applications of the waste materials. The information presented was obtained from a review of published literature, presentations of research by professionals at different forums, personal meetings with experts, and a questionnaire regarding the use of waste materials to each state highway agency.Public concern is constantly expressed about the vast quantities of useful materials being discarded or destroyed. Legislation to stimulate recycling efforts is in force in a number of states, and is being debated in others. One avenue of approach toward waste reduction is presented here.The book describes the state-of-the-practice in the use of waste materials in highway construction in the US and describes the applications of selected waste materials including: waste tires, waste glass, reclaimed paving materials, slags and ashes, building rubble, sewage sludge, and incinerator residue. An evaluation based on technical, environmental, and economic factors indicated that reclaimed paving materials, coal fly ash, blast furnace slag, bottom ash, boiler slag, steel slag, and rubber tires have significant potential to replace conventional materials for various applications in highway construction. Specific applications of the waste products and potential problems associated with their usage in highway operations, which must be addressed prior to their extensive use, are also included.

This volume identifies existing statist approaches and political economies of river management in South Asia. These rivers are heavily suffering from millions of people who in contrast consider them as holy and worship them. Edited by Professor Imtiaz Ahmed, the contributors of this book from India, Nepal and Pakistan are leading readers on a journey through the transboundary rivers of South Asia where rivers are vital for the life and living. The book explains why the region needs a framework for cooperation on the wellbeing of these rivers. River management is the key to sustaining healthy river systems. The authors stress that right of the rivers must be codified and guaranteed by the state and the people in South Asia. However, the statist approach to the transboundary rivers in South Asia actually conceives them as national rivers. This volume contributes to the current campaign of overcoming the water dystopias in South Asia.

Right to water may sound novel and somewhat dramatic, yet it has been central to the quest of human civilization for thousands of years. One of the earliest references to water as 'common property' can be found in the Jewish laws as early as 3000 BCE.Similar views are also found in Islam. In fact, the Arabic word for Islamic law - shari'ah - originally meant "the place from which one descends to water."Since water is a gift from the divine to all living beings, sharing water is regarded as holy duty. This is found across religions, regions, societies, and communities, from New Zealand to Nigeria, from Bangladesh to Brazil. But then, what transformed the divine sanction? What led to the negation of the 'commons,' with sharing of the riverine water across territorial boundaries suffering the most?The answer probably lies as much as in the politics of safeguarding one's personal or national interests as it is in the limitations imposed by our disciplinary understanding of things.In this context, a thorough reexamination, even reconceptualization,of some of the core issuesis required.Firstly, the concept of water needs to be understood not as H2O, as it is done in physical sciences,but as H2OP4. That is, the meaning of water in social sciences must include not only 'twice hydrogen plus oxygen' but also four P's - pollution, power, politics and profit. This is not to discount the 'science' in the conceptualization of water but rather to add elements central to social sciences.Secondly, the concept of river needs to be redefined and understood not as a carrier of water, as assumedin most of theWestern languages, but as 'nadi,' a flow consisting of prana (life), shakti (power), and atman (soul), as etymologically definedin most of the South Asian languages. This comes closer to what critical hydrologists would say, WEBS, that is, a 'river' consists of water, energy, biodiversity and sediment. In this light, any fragmentation of transboundary river waterin the name of 'sharing'becomes an unworkable option, unless of course a mechanism is found to 'share'the water of the river along with its energy, biodiversity and sediment, and that again, without distorting and harming the life of the river!Thirdly, the subject of 'water commons'needs to be approached from the standpoint of 'rights' of both human andriver. This is to flag the notion that nature, including rivers, has 'rights'just like humans, although their manifestations may be different. In fact, empowered humans, particularly those in control of the state, have more 'responsibility' than 'rights' in dissuading themselves and others from creating conditions of human wrongs, not only against fellow human beings but also against nature.Finally, if the 'rights' ofhumans are to be ensuredthen there is an urgent need to reconceptualize and mainstream the human as a multiverse being. This is because humans are not only political beings but also economic, cultural, ecological, technological, and psychological beings. In this light, if conflicts are to be contained then humans need to be empowered in all possible areasof life - politics, economics, ecology, culture, technology, and psychology. This would certainly require empowering each and every person, all at the same time receptive to nature in general and rivers in particular.The book is designed to initiate a discourse on the civilizational quest for water commons, indeed, with the expectation that a discussion on rights and rivers would lead to a creative flow of ideas and practices.

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.

Divorce is usually studied in terms of two distinct perspectives. One focuses on the procedure laid down for giving the seal of final authority to a divorce. The other explores the processes that are set in motion once the stability of a marriage is threatened. The latter perspective does not see divorce in isolation but treats it in the wider context of social structure. When divorce in Muslim communities is discussed, the tendency quite often is to place theology and law at the centre. This book recognizes that divorce in Muslim communities entails substantial theological and legal dimensions, but takes as its point of departure the view that it is only by placing divorce in the social and cultural context that meaningful conclusions can be arrived at. It examines, in the light of empirical evidence, the incidence of divorce and separation, the social and other causes due to which divorce and separation takes place, and the position of divorced women in society as well as their prospects of remarriage. In the process substantial methodological and theoretical questions relevant to the study of divorce as a social phenomenon are raised. The book has an immediate practical aim as well. Muslim law of divorce, particularly the provision of triple divorce, which vests a unilateral right in the husband to pronounce a summary divorce upon his wife, has been the subject of considerable controversy. Essentially, the papers brought together in this book are sociological analyses of divorce and remarriage among Muslims in India and the data thrown up as part of these analyses should clear some points in the controversy.