This report explains the ecology and social profile of coastal systems in Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania in order to contribute to the development of effective strategies to enhance the resilience of marine and coastal systems in the Western Indian Ocean. Special consideration is given to the effects and consequences of climate change and economic development.
This book explores the knowledge, work and life of Pacific coastal populations from the Pacific Northwest to Panama. Center stage in this volume is the knowledge people acquire on coastal and marine ecosystems. Material and aesthetic benefits from interacting with the environment contribute to the ongoing building of coastal cultures. The contributors are particularly interested in how local knowledge -either recently generated or transmitted along generations- interfaces with science, conservation, policy and artistic expression. Their observations exhibit a wide array of outcomes ranging from resource and human exploitation to the magnification of cultural resilience and coastal heritage. The interdisciplinary nature of ethnobiology allows the chapter authors to have a broad range of freedom when examining their subject matter. They build a multifaceted understanding of coastal heritage through the different lenses offered by the humanities, social sciences, oceanography, fisheries and conservation science and, not surprisingly, the arts. Coastal Heritage and Cultural Resilience establishes an intimate bond between coastal communities and the audience in a time when resilience of coastal life needs to be celebrated and fortified.
This book is intended as a conceptual roadmap to show how some of the numerous pieces of complex coastal systems intersect and might interact under changing future environmental regimes. It is addressed to a non-technical but environmentally literate audience that includes the lay public, policy makers, planners, engineers and academics interested in the causes and consequences of global changes as they are likely to affect coastal systems. The book also outlines some strategies for anticipating and responding to the challenges that lie ahead. The purpose is not to offer a technical treatise on how to build better numerical models or to provide the cognoscenti with new scientific details or theories. Quite on the contrary the authors aim to provide a holistic, easy-accessible overview of coastal systems and therefore use a writing style that is non-technical, nonmathematical and non-jargonized throughout. Wherever scientific terms are required to avoid ambiguity, a clear and simple definition is presented and those definitions are repeated in the glossary. The authors aim to communicate with all who care about the future of coastal environments. In Part 1, they present some underlying general “big picture” concepts that are applicable to coastal processes and coastal change worldwide. Part 2 reviews some of the more important physical, ecological and societal causes and outcomes of coastal change. A selection of case studies of some prominent and highly vulnerable coastal regions is presented in Part 3. Some strategies for facilitating and supporting collaboration among the global scientific community to enhance future coastal resilience are outlined in Part 4.
This Proceedings contains over 260 papers on cutting-edge research presented at the 9th International Conference on Coastal Sediments 2019 (CS19), held in Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida, USA from May 27-31, 2019. This technical specialty conference is devoted to promoting an interdisciplinary exchange of state-of-the-art knowledge among researchers in the fields of coastal engineering, geology, oceanography, and related disciplines.With the theme of 'Advancing Science & Engineering for Resilient Coastal Systems', this Proceedings covers a wide range of research topics on coastal sediment processes from nearshore sediment transport and modelling to beach processes, shore protection, and coastal management.
The trans-disciplinary thematic areas of oceans management and policy require stocktaking of the state of knowledge on ecosystem services being derived from coastal and marine areas. Recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) especially Goals 14 and 15 explicitly focus on this. This Handbook brings together a carefully chosen set of world-class contributions from ecology, economics, and other development science and attempts to provide policy relevant scientific information on ecosystem services from marine and coastal ecosystems, nuances of economic valuation, relevant legal and sociological response policies for effective management of marine areas for enhanced human well being. The contributors focus on the possible nexus of science-society and science-policy with the objective of informing on decision makers of the governmental agencies, business and industry and civil society in general with respect to sustainable management of Oceans.
This book explores the possibilities of understanding the concept of climate refugees in order to ascribe to a consensual agreement that climate refugees are evident and this situation is a reality. A framework to study both empirically and theoretically is presented in a detailed manner so that it may become a resource for understanding the challenges of climate refugees. Through discussion and analysis the book presents potential answers to such questions as: ● Why has the international system been so short-sighted and has not given importance to the problems of climate migrants and refugees? ● How to identify a climate refugee? ● How do you justify a climate refugee or a migrant? ● What are internally displaced people? Should we call them just refugees? The book covers the interdisciplinary nature of climate refugees and the perspectives of social science. The empirical findings provides an edge to holistically understanding climate refugees. This book discusses the concept of, what really is a climate refugee, and the necessary factors to make it an important part of the climate discourse. The legality of the term is missing in international parlance, and the academic discourse should provide the necessary critique required for the evolution of the subject under study. Therefore, the major objective of the book is to make the subject of climate migration known to all.
World Seas: An Environmental Evaluation, Second Edition, Volume Two: The Indian Ocean to the Pacific provides a comprehensive review of the environmental condition of the seas from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Each chapter is written by experts in the field who provide historical overviews in environmental terms, current environmental status, major problems arising from human use, informed comments on major trends, problems and successes, and recommendations for the future. The book is an invaluable worldwide reference source for students and researchers who are concerned with marine environmental science, fisheries, oceanography and engineering and coastal zone development. Covers regional issues that help countries find solutions to environmental decline that may have already developed elsewhere Provides scientific reviews of regional issues, thus empowering managers and policymakers to make progress in under-resourced countries and regions Includes comprehensive maps and updated statistics in each region covered
This volume collects and combines research on regional integration projects beyond Europe and in the Global South across a wide range of policy issues. Given the plurality and diversity of regional organisations, there is a growing need to systematically analyse, assess, and explain the performance of regionalism. Acknowledging the considerable differences in settings, institutional design, and politico-economic environment of regional organisations, the expert contributors move beyond EU-centric notions to offer a profound overview and propose new dimensions of innovative performance research. Systematic and in-depth research from Eurasia, Asia, Africa, and Latin America on organisations such as the Eurasian Economic Union, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Indian Ocean Commission, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, African Union, and the Organisation of American States, enables us to identify the conditions and determinants that shape performance across regions, actors, policy areas, and settings. The book provides readily accessible, important, and novel information to students and scholars of political science, international relations, EU and European studies, peace and conflict studies, comparative regionalism, interregional and inter-organizational studies, and area studies, and persons interested in specific policy fields such as trade, security, or development policy.
Human health and well-being are tied to the vitality of the global ocean and coastal systems on which so many live and rely. We engage with these extraordinary environments to enhance both our health and our well-being. But, we need to recognize that introducing contaminants and otherwise altering these ocean systems can harm human health and well-being in significant and substantial ways. These are complex, challenging, and critically important themes. How the human relationship to the oceans evolves in coming decades may be one of the most important connections in understanding our personal and social well-being. Yet, our understanding of this relationship is far too limited. This remarkable volume brings experts from diverse disciplines and builds a workable understanding of breadth and depth of the processes – both social and environmental – that will help us to limit future costs and enhance the benefits of sustainable marine systems. In particular, the authors have developed a shared view that the global coastal environment is under threat through intensified natural resource utilization, as well as changes to global climate and other environmental systems. All these changes contribute individually, but more importantly cumulatively, to higher risks for public health and to the global burden of disease. This pioneering book will be of value to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in public health, environmental, economic, and policy fields. Additionally, the treatment of these complex systems is of essential value to the policy community responsible for these questions and to the broader audience for whom these issues are more directly connected to their own health and well-being. "The seas across this planet and their effects on human society and its destiny are a fascinating subject for analysis and insights derived from intellectual inquiry. This diverse and complex subject necessarily requires a blending of knowledge from different disciplines, which the authors of this volume have achieved with remarkable success." "The following pages in this volume are written in a lucid and very readable style, and provide a wealth of knowledge and insightful analysis, which is a rare amalgam of multi-disciplinary perspectives and unique lines of intellectual inquiry. It is valuable to get a volume such as this, which appeals as much to a non-specialist reader as it does to those who are specialists in the diverse but interconnected subjects covered in this volume." (From the "Foreword" written by, R K Pachauri, Director General, TERI and Chairman, IPCC)
Scientists and researchers concerned with the behavior of large ecosystems have focused in recent years on the concept of "resilience." Traditional perspectives held that ecological systems exist close to a steady state and resilience is the ability of the system to return rapidly to that state following perturbation. However beginning with the work of C. S. Holling in the early 1970s, researchers began to look at conditions far from the steady state where instabilities can cause a system to shift into an entirely different regime of behavior, and where resilience is measured by the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system is restructured. Resilience and the Behavior of Large-Scale Systems examines theories of resilience and change, offering readers a thorough understanding of how the properties of ecological resilience and human adaptability interact in complex, regional-scale systems. The book addresses the theoretical concepts of resilience and stability in large-scale ecosystems as well as the empirical application of those concepts in a diverse set of cases. In addition, it discusses the practical implications of the new theoretical approaches and their role in the sustainability of human-modified ecosystems. The book begins with a review of key properties of complex adaptive systems that contribute to overall resilience, including multiple equlibria, complexity, self-organization at multiple scales, and order; it also presents a set of mathematical metaphors to describe and deepen the reader's understanding of the ideas being discussed. Following the introduction are case studies that explore the biophysical dimensions of resilience in both terrestrial and aquatic systems and evaluate the propositions presented in the introductory chapters. The book concludes with a synthesis section that revisits propositions in light of the case studies, while an appendix presents a detailed account of the relationship between return times for a disturbed system and its resilienc. In addition to the editors, contributors include Stephen R. Carpenter, Carl Folke, C. S. Holling, Bengt-Owe Jansson, Donald Ludwig, Ariel Lugo, Tim R. McClanahan, Garry D. Peterson, and Brian H. Walker.
