The countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia urgently need to accelerate the integration of environmental concerns into their agricultural and forestry sectors. Policies and laws promoting integration have undoubtedly improved, but implementation is lagging, particularly in the east and in agriculture. Integrating Environment into Agriculture and Forestry raises awareness of the pressing need to step up progress on implementation. Failure to integrate environment into agriculture and forestry will have major economic and human health implications, eg. soil salinity in Uzbekistan is estimat.
Learn how to fill forests with food by viewing agriculture from a remarkably different perspective: that a healthy forest can be maintained while growing a wide range of food, medicinal, and other nontimber products. The practices of forestry and farming are often seen as mutually exclusive, because in the modern world, agriculture involves open fields, straight rows, and machinery to grow crops, while forests are reserved primarily for timber and firewood harvesting. In Farming the Woods, authors Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel demonstrate that it doesn’t have to be an either-or scenario, but a complementary one; forest farms can be most productive in places where the plow is not: on steep slopes and in shallow soils. Forest farming is an invaluable practice to integrate into any farm or homestead, especially as the need for unique value-added products and supplemental income becomes increasingly important for farmers. Many of the daily indulgences we take for granted, such as coffee, chocolate, and many tropical fruits, all originate in forest ecosystems. But few know that such abundance is also available in the cool temperate forests of North America. Farming the Woods covers in detail how to cultivate, harvest, and market high-value nontimber forest crops such as American ginseng, shiitake mushrooms, ramps (wild leeks), maple syrup, fruit and nut trees, ornamentals, and more. Along with profiles of forest farmers from around the country, readers are also provided comprehensive information on: • historical perspectives of forest farming; • mimicking the forest in a changing climate; • cultivation of medicinal crops; • cultivation of food crops; • creating a forest nursery; • harvesting and utilizing wood products; • the role of animals in the forest farm; and, • how to design your forest farm and manage it once it’s established. Farming the Woods is an essential book for farmers and gardeners who have access to an established woodland, are looking for productive ways to manage it, and are interested in incorporating aspects of agroforestry, permaculture, forest gardening, and sustainable woodlot management into the concept of a whole-farm organism.
The risks and opportunities of climate change for agriculture can be effectively dealt only by aligning policies, developing institutional capabilities, and investing in infrastructure and farms, as per the experiences of Albania, FYR Macedonia, Moldova, and Uzbekistan.
This book reviews the concept, contemporary research efforts and the implementation of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). The IWRM concept was established as an international guiding water management paradigm in the early 1990ies and has become a vital approach to solving the problems associated with the topic of water. The book summarizes fourteen comprehensive IWRM research projects with worldwide coverage and analyses their motivations, settings, approaches and implementation of results. Aiming to be an up-to-date interdisciplinary scientific reference, this book provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis of contemporary IWRM research, examples of science based implementations and a synthesis of the lessons learnt. It concludes with some major future challenges, the solving of which will further strengthen the IWRM concept.
The impacts of climate change on agricultural systems and rural economies are already evident throughout Europe and Central Asia. This study, Reducing the Vulnerability of Georgia s Agricultural Systems to Climate Change, provides a menu of options for climate change adaptation in the agricultural and water resources sectors in Georgia.
A practical, bipartisan call to action from the world’s leading thinkers on the environment and sustainability Sustainability has emerged as a global priority over the past several years. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the adoption of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals through the United Nations have highlighted the need to address critical challenges such as the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, water shortages, and air pollution. But in the United States, partisan divides, regional disputes, and deep disagreements over core principles have made it nearly impossible to chart a course toward a sustainable future. This timely new book, edited by celebrated scholar Daniel C. Esty, offers fresh thinking and forward-looking solutions from environmental thought leaders across the political spectrum. The book’s forty essays cover such subjects as ecology, environmental justice, Big Data, public health, and climate change, all with an emphasis on sustainability. The book focuses on moving toward sustainability through actionable, bipartisan approaches based on rigorous analytical research.
At their High-Level Meeting (HLM) in 2020, members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) set out a number of commitments and aspirations to align development co-operation with the objectives of international agreements to fight climate change and protect the environment. One year later, this report documents the individual and collective steps taken to give effect to the four voluntary commitments set out in the HLM Communiqué.
This review of New Zealand's environmental conditions and policies evaluates progress in reducing the pollution burden, improving natural resource management, integrating environmental and economic policies, and strengthening international co-operation.
In the mid 1980's - while a student at the department of econometrics at the Free University - I became an assistant at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IvM) of this university. My main task was assisting with the com putational aspects of the project 'an integrated environmental model: a case study in the Markiezaat area'. A number of methodological problems were for mulated during the operationalization phase of that project, such as the need to develop systematically an integrated model design and to look for means of handling different sources of information. Prof. Dr. P. Nijkamp of the Department of Regional Economics and Drs. L. Hordijk - at that time leader of the economic-technological research group at the IvM - therefore initiated a project proposal to be supported by the Netherlands Organisation for the Advancement of Pure Research (ZWO). Meanwhile I became an assistant to Prof. Dr. P. Nijkamp, surveying qualita ti ve statistical developments in the field of regional inequa li ty analysis. This inventory has been shown to be a relevant basis for the preparation of this book. In spring 1982 I began working at IvM on the above project on integrated environmental modelling.
