This title is an examination of the role and relevance of international bureaucracies in global environmental governance. After a discussion of theoretical context, reaserch design, and empiral methodology, the book presents nine in-depth case studies of bureaucracies.
Written by an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars, the book explores how organizational scholarship and thinking can inform an understanding of global change issues and examines the potential of cooperation as a practice an organizing accomplishment, and a value for understanding issues of global change.
Climate change is a major problem, generating both risks and opportunities that will have a direct impact on the economy and the financial sector. In recent years, climate change has threatened both the survival of the financial system and economic development. The growing occurrence of extreme climate events combined with the imprudent nature of economic growth can cause unsustainable levels of harm to the financial sectors. On the other hand, it presents a range of new business challenges. In contrast to the most evident physical risks, companies are vulnerable to transformational risks that arise from the reaction of society to climate change, such as technological change, regulation and markets that can boost the cost of doing business, threats to the profitability of existing goods, or effects on the value of the asset. Climate change also offers new business opportunities, and it has made research in the context of a sustainable financial sector indispensable. The Handbook of Research on Climate Change and the Sustainable Financial Sector focuses on the impacts of climate change on various sectors of the world economy. This book covers how businesses can improve their sustainability, the impact of climate change on the financial sector, and specifically, the impacts on financial services, supply chains, and the socio-economic status of the world. Beyond focusing on the impacts to the financial industry itself, this book assesses how climate change in the financial sector affects the well-being of society in areas such as unemployment, economic recessions, decreases in consumer purchases, and more. This book is essential for stockbrokers, business managers, directors, fund managers, financial analysts, consultants and actuaries, institutional investors, policymakers, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in a comprehensive view of the impact of climate change on the financial sector.
Soil Management and Climate Change: Effects on Organic Carbon, Nitrogen Dynamics, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions provides a state of the art overview of recent findings and future research challenges regarding physical, chemical and biological processes controlling soil carbon, nitrogen dynamic and greenhouse gas emissions from soils. This book is for students and academics in soil science and environmental science, land managers, public administrators and legislators, and will increase understanding of organic matter preservation in soil and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Given the central role soil plays on the global carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycles and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions, there is an urgent need to increase our common understanding about sources, mechanisms and processes that regulate organic matter mineralization and stabilization, and to identify those management practices and processes which mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, helping increase organic matter stabilization with suitable supplies of available N. - Provides the latest findings about soil organic matter stabilization and greenhouse gas emissions - Covers the effect of practices and management on soil organic matter stabilization - Includes information for readers to select the most suitable management practices to increase soil organic matter stabilization
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
"More than ever, leaders are expected to be the change agents of their organizations. Yet CEO turnover continues to rise and organizations continue to struggle in their efforts to confront the fearsome adaptive challenges of the global age. Epic Change is a path-breaking contribution to the study of leadership and organizational change. Based on a landmark study of 53 cases of large-scale organizational change in business, healthcare, government, education, and the non-profit sector, acclaimed thought leader and researcher, Dr. Timothy R. Clark unveils the "Power Curve of Change" framework and EPIC system for change management (Evaluate, Prepare, Implement, Consolidate) for leaders who are charged to lead high-stakes change initiatives in their organizations. Epic Change presents a strategic-level road map, along with tactical level tools, for the every-day needs of leaders who must respond to all types of adaptive challenge to remain competitive. It represents a comprehensive, research-based program for leaders who want to develop the indispensable competency of leading change in a permanently and profoundly different age. Change rarely fails for lack of strategy—Clark shows that only the discretionary efforts of people can make change happen—and this requires leadership and energy management. The Epic Change approach has been successfully field-tested with leaders at all levels and in organizations around the world. This important resource provides leaders new research-based tools to increase and sustain the energy of any change effort."
Climate change has an impact on the ability of transboundary water management institutions to deliver on their respective mandates. The starting point for this book is that actors within transboundary water management institutions develop responses to the climate change debate, as distinct from the physical phenomenon of climate change. Actors respond to this debate broadly in three distinct ways - adapt, resist (as in avoiding the issue) and subvert (as in using the debate to fulfil their own agenda). The book charts approaches which have been taken over the past two decades to promote more.
This book is the first of its kind to examine the role of great powers in the international politics of climate change. It develops a novel analytical framework for studying environmental power in international relations, what counts as a great power in the environmental field, and what their special environmental responsibilities are. In doing so, the book connects International Relations (IR) debates on power inequality, great powers and great power management, with global environmental politics (GEP) scholarship. The book brings together leading scholars in IR and GEP whose contributions focus on major environmental powers (United States, China, European Union, India, Brazil, Russia) and international institutions and issue areas (UN Security Council, multilateral environmental agreements, international climate leadership, coal politics). The contributors to this volume examine how individual great powers have responded to the global climate challenge and whether they have accepted a special responsibility for stabilizing the global climate. They place emerging discourses on great power responsibility in the context of wider debates about international environmental leadership and climate change securitization. And they provide new insights into how international power inequality intersects with the global ecological crisis, and what special role great powers could and should play in the international fight against global warming.
Agriculture has shaped our planet into the world we know, but its continued success is threatened by changing weather patterns. Climate change is a diverse, multifactorial phenomenon and the agronomic strategies we employ to combat its effects need to be case-specific, with significant regional differences. With two major sections, the first explaining the challenges posed by climate change and the second reviewing the current research avenues employed, this book combines detailed discussion of physiological plant responses with practical experience on crop stress management and breeding. Using a number of illustrative case studies, it discusses how the stresses resulting from climate change could be overcome by assessing, measuring and predicting environmental changes and stresses, and identifying opportunities for adapting to multifactorial change. A global effort to combine climate change science with policy is desperately needed. Climate change will continue to pose many challenges to agriculture in the future but by taking an integrative approach to predicting and adapting to change, this book will inspire researchers to turn those challenges into opportunities.