A unique contribution that brings together leading environmental scientists and researchers to give readers a comprehensive yet accessible overview of current issues.
First Published in 2016. In this anthology of essays for Global Studies students, the editors hope to encourage readers to live intelligent and thoughtful lives, not only as citizens of their native countries, but also as citizens of the world.
Doing Environmental Ethics explains how we may transform our fossil-fuel-burning economy, which continues to intensify our ecological crisis, into a circular and ecological economy. The text resists political corruption and personal greed by gleaning ethical insights from our philosophical and religious cultures and by embracing the scientific Gaia hypothesis for the Earth. Its reasoning ascribes intrinsic worth to uplifting duties and rights as well as inspiring virtues and relationships, and tests applying these values by predicting the likely consequences of acting on them. It affirms all life has value for itself, and that human life also values reasoning and feelings and being ethical. The third edition examines US and international environmental policies through 2018. It analyzes the Trump administration’s repudiation of the environmental policies of the Obama administration and its new rules slashing the social costs of climate change. The text reviews a draft UN treaty that would impose human rights and environmental constraints on transnational corporations, but it also highlights outstanding examples of corporate upcycling and low-carbon innovation. Finally, the third edition explains why food security requires protecting the food sovereignty of farming communities and cooperatives, as well as public policies ensuring fair profits for farmers practicing agro-ecology.
5 Easy Pieces features five contributions, originally published in Nature and Science, demonstrating the massive impacts of modern industrial fisheries on marine ecosystems. Initially published over an eight-year period, from 1995 to 2003, these articles illustrate a transition in scientific thought—from the initially-contested realization that the crisis of fisheries and their underlying ocean ecosystems was, in fact, global to its broad acceptance by mainstream scientific and public opinion. Daniel Pauly, a well-known fisheries expert who was a co-author of all five articles, presents each original article here and surrounds it with a rich array of contemporary comments, many of which led Pauly and his colleagues to further study. In addition, Pauly documents how popular media reported on the articles and their findings. By doing so, he demonstrates how science evolves. In one chapter, for example, the popular media pick up a contribution and use Pauly’s conclusions to contextualize current political disputes; in another, what might be seen as nitpicking by fellow scientists leads Pauly and his colleagues to strengthen their case that commercial fishing is endangering the global marine ecosystem. This structure also allows readers to see how scientists’ interactions with the popular media can shape the reception of their own, sometimes controversial, scientific studies. In an epilog, Pauly reflects on the ways that scientific consensus emerges from discussions both within and outside the scientific community.
Social science research provides not only abstract, conceptual knowledge about society but also concrete, instrumental knowledge. It enables us to take action to recompose the world we live in. However, this book rejects narrow and simplistic conceptions of research use and its impact on policy-making, to embrace a more complex approach to seeing and dealing with social science. In the paradigm of "evidence-based policy", "evidence" is understood in its broad sense as information that helps form policies. Nonetheless, within current practices and discourse, it is not clear what "information" is, what is really meant by "evidence", and how it can be obtained objectively. The book draws on papers presented at the International Forum on the Social Science-Policy Nexus, where experts examined current practices and problems in areas such as social policy, migration, urban policies and globalisation. The Forum set a precedent in terms of dialogue between researchers and policy-makers. The authors contribute to enriching and elucidating the most common conceptualisations of the research-policy nexus. They represent a rich diversity of views, although most agree that an effective strategy to enhance social science-policy linkages should be underpinned by a theoretical and methodological framework that takes into account the interplay of different social actors.
An autobiography from an American scientist, President Carter’s Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, and the eighth president of Stanford University. More than personal memoir, Donald Kennedy's story is not only a chronicle of watershed years in the history of Stanford University, but also a reflection on academia's perennial concerns. The story builds from his childhood and family in New England through mentors at Harvard to reflections on his early years at Stanford. What is the scope of a teacher's responsibilities? What is the proper balance between research and teaching? How far can a professor of literature stretch activism and free speech before losing tenure? How can the University look so rich and feel so poor? While biology department head, Kennedy founded Human Biology, Stanford's first interdisciplinary program. As president, issues of ethnic diversity, student activism, multicultural curricula, patent rights, divestment in South Africa, a student hostage crisis, and a major earthquake colored his pivotal years at Stanford. At the heart of Kennedy's journey has been the belief that one must give back to society as mentor, inspiring his students; as commissioner of the FDA, wrestling with issues of freedom and regulation; as editor of Science, confronting the clash of science and politics. Throughout the book, sidebar recollections from students, friends, and colleagues reflect on his caring encouragement and core humanity, his love of teaching, and a life profoundly committed to science and public service.
The scientific work of women is often viewed through a national or regional lens, but given the growing worldwide connectivity of most, if not all, scientific disciplines, there needs to be recognition of how different social, political, and economic mechanisms impact women's participation in the global scientific enterprise. Although these complex sociocultural factors often operate in different ways in various countries and regions, studies within and across nations consistently show inverse correlations between levels in the scientific and technical career hierarchy and the number of women in science: the higher the positions, the fewer the number of women. Understanding these complex patterns requires interdisciplinary and international approaches. In April 2011, a committee overseen by the National Academies' standing Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine (CWSEM) convened a workshop entitled, "Blueprint for the Future: Framing the Issues of Women in Science in a Global Context" in Washington, D.C. CWSEM's goals are to coordinate, monitor, and advocate action to increase the participation of women in science, engineering, and medicine. The scope of the workshop was limited to women's participation in three scientific disciplines: chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and statistics. The workshop presentations came from a group of scholars and professionals who have been working for several years on documenting, analyzing, and interpreting the status of women in selected technical fields around the world. Examination of the three disciplines-chemistry, computer science, and mathematics and statistics-can be considered a first foray into collecting and analyzing information that can be replicated in other fields. The complexity of studying science internationally cannot be underestimated, and the presentations demonstrate some of the evidentiary and epistemological challenges that scholars and professionals face in collecting and analyzing data from many different countries and regions. Blueprint for the Future: Framing the Issues of Women in Science in a Global Context summarizes the workshop presentations, which provided an opportunity for dialogue about the issues that the authors have been pursuing in their work to date.
The concept of sustainability lies at the core of the challenge of environment and development and the way governments, business and environmental groups respond to it. Green Development provides a clear and coherent analysis of sustainable development in both theory and practice. This third edition retains the clear and powerful argument of previous editions, but has been updated to reflect advances in ideas and changes in international policy. Greater attention has been given to political ecology, environmental risk and the environmental impacts of development. This fully revised third edition discusses: the origins of thinking about sustainability and sustainable development and its evolution to the present day the ideas that dominate mainstream sustainable development (ecological modernization, market environmentalism and environmental economics) the nature and diversity of alternative ideas about sustainability that challenge ‘business as usual’ thinking (for example ecosocialism, ecofeminism, deep ecology and political ecology) the dilemmas of sustainability in the context of dryland degradation, deforestation, biodiversity conservation, dam construction and urban and industrial development the nature of policy choices about the environment and development strategies and between reformist and radical responses to the contemporary global dilemmas. Green Development offers clear insights into the challenges of environmental sustainability and social and economic development. It is unique in offering a synthesis of theoretical ideas on sustainability and in its coverage of the extensive literature on the environment and development around the world. This book has proved its value to generations of students as an authoritative, thought-provoking and readable guide to the field of sustainable development.
There are more than 6 billion people living on Earth today, and the United Nations predicts that this number will surge to 9.1 billion by the year 2050. However, the natural resources necessary to sustain the world's population-including freshwater, arabl
" Gary Bryner's brief, readable, capstone book: " Features a forward by Mark A. Boyer Outlines the major environmental challenges facing the world today Applies international relations theory to these challenges Covers such key topics as development, sustainability, and market capitalism Offers a social justice perspective to environmental problems and solutions Borne of an amalgam of social science, fieldwork, and a passionate commitment to justice, this book brings debates about climate change to a new level, compelling readers and researchers to rethink the reasons for reversing global environmental trends. The book lays out three inspirations for improving environmental prospects: effective markets, sustainable development, and environmental justice for the most vulnerable. It also projects three possible scenarios flowing from the success or failure of these inspirations one bleak, one breakthrough, and one of status quo. Gary Bryner is not sanguine about humanity s ability to make the right choices, but this does not deter him from asking us to think beyond our own generation and our own species in urging environmental action now."