Using case studies from Florida and the Caribbean region, this book summarizes the state of coral reef conservation today. The question this book answers is, what is the best way to protect the vulnerable coral reefs, with an ever-worsening climate crisis? The book’s contribution is looking closely at people’s avenues to participate in coral reef management, and how the public is increasingly making their voices heard in the management process.
Set at the intersection of political theory and environmental politics, yet with broad engagement across the environmental social sciences and humanities, The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, defines, illustrates, and challenges the field of environmental political theory (EPT). Featuring contributions from distinguished political scientists working in this field, this volume addresses canonical theorists and contemporary environmental problems with a diversity of theoretical approaches. The initial volume focuses on EPT as a field of inquiry, engaging both traditions of political thought and the academy. In the second section, the handbook explores conceptualizations of nature and the environment, as well as the nature of political subjects, communities, and boundaries within our environments. A third section addresses the values that motivate environmental theorists--including justice, responsibility, rights, limits, and flourishing--and the potential conflicts that can emerge within, between, and against these ideals. The final section examines the primary structures that constrain or enable the achievement of environmental ends, as well as theorizations of environmental movements, citizenship, and the potential for on-going environmental action and change.
A key point in the book is the need to focus more seriously at the energy problem as the real problem behind global warming. The failure of global climate policies to reduce CO2 emissions and halt climate change has led an increasing number of scientist and activists to lose confidence in democracy's ability to handle climate change and led them to look to more authoritarian measures to meet the problem. The book documents these trends, also from a historical perspective, criticize them and sketches more democratic alternatives.
Ecology, Engineering, and the Paradox of Management is the first book that addresses and reconciles what many take to be the core paradox facing environmental decision-makers and stakeholders: How do they restore the environment while at the same time provide ever more services reliably from that environment, including clean air, water and energy for more and more people? The book provides a conceptual framework, empirical case analyses, and organizational proposals to resolve the paradox, be it in the US, Europe, or elsewhere. Thus, Ecology, Engineering, and the Paradox of Management has multiple audiences. First are the key professions involved in the protection and improvement of ecosystems and in the provision and delivery of services from those ecosystems. These include ecologists (and other natural scientists such as conservation biologists, climatologists, forest scientists, and toxicologists), engineers (as well as hydrologists, environmental engineers, civil engineers, and line operators), modeling and gaming experts, managers, planners, and power, agriculture, and recreation communities. Another audience includes university researchers in ecology, conservation biology, engineering, the policy sciences, and resource management. Those interested in interdisciplinary approaches in these fields will also find the book especially helpful. Finally, those interested in the Everglades, the Columbia River Basin, San Francisco Bay-Delta, and the Green Heart of western Netherlands will find new insights here, as the book provides a detailed examination of the paradox in each of these cases.
"Offers new insights for collaborative approaches in marine conservation management. Drawing from ten keystone case studies, Wondolleck and Yaffee offer carefully researched, practical advice along with five different pathways for collaborating successfully from community to multinational levels."--Page 4 of cover.
The Nile provides freshwater not only for domestic and industrial use, but also for irrigated agriculture, hydropower dams and the vast fisheries resource of the lakes of Central Africa. The Nile River Basin covers the whole Nile Basin and is based on the results of three major research projects supported by the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF). It provides unique and up-to-date insights on agriculture, water resources, governance, poverty, productivity, upstream-downstream linkages, innovations, future plans and their implications. Specifically, the book elaborates the history and the major current and future challenges and opportunities of the Nile river basin. It analyzes the basin characteristics using statistical data and modern tools such as remote sensing and geographic information systems. Population distribution, poverty and vulnerability linked to production system and water access are assessed at the international basin scale, and the hydrology of the region is also analysed. This text provides in-depth scientific model adaptation results for hydrology, sediments, benefit sharing, and payment for environmental services based on detailed scientific and experimental work of the Blue Nile Basin. Production systems as they relate to crops, livestock, fisheries and wetlands are analyzed for the whole Blue and White Nile basin including their constraints. Policy, institutional and technological interventions that increase productivity of agriculture and use of water are also assessed. Water demand modeling, scenario analysis, and tradeoffs that inform future plans and opportunities are included to provide a unique, comprehensive coverage of the subject.
Community-based forest management (CBFM) is a model of forest management in which a community takes part in decision making and implementation, and monitoring of activities affecting the natural resources around them. CBFM provides a framework for a community members to secure access to the products and services that flow from the landscape in which they live and has become an essential component of any comprehensive approach to forest management. In this volume, Nicholas K. Menzies looks at communities in China, Zanzibar, Brazil, and India where, despite differences in landscape, climate, politics, and culture, common challenges and themes arise in making a transition from forest management by government agencies to CBFM. The stories of these four distinct places highlight the difficulties communities face when trying to manage their forests and negotiate partnerships with others interested in forest management, such as the commercial forest sector or conservation and environmental organizations. These issues are then considered against a growing body of research concerning what constitutes successful CBFM. Drawing on published and unpublished case studies, project reports, and his own rich experience, Menzies analyzes how CBFM fits into the broader picture of the management of natural resources, highlighting the conditions that bring about effective practices and the most just and equitable stewardship of resources. A critical companion for students, researchers, and practitioners, Our Forest, Your Ecosystem, Their Timber provides a singular resource on the emergence and evolution of CBFM.
Rangelands are large natural landscapes that can include grasslands, shrublands, savannahs and woodlands. They are greatly influenced by, and often dependent on, the action of herbivores. In the majority of rangelands the dominant herbivores are found in domestic herds that are managed by mobile pastoralists. Most pastoralists manage their rangelands communally, benefitting from the greater flexibility and seasonal resource access that common property regimes can offer. As this book shows, this creates a major challenge for governance and institutions. This work improves our understanding of the importance of governance, how it can be strengthened and the principles that underpin good governance, in order to prevent degradation of rangelands and ensure their sustainability. It describes the nature of governance at different levels: community governance, state governance, international governance, and the unique features of rangelands that demand collective action (issues of scale, ecological disequilibrium and seasonality). A series of country case studies is presented, drawn from a wide spectrum of examples from Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Europe and North America. These provide contrasting lessons which are summarised to promote improved governance of rangelands and pastoralist livelihoods.
A comparison of how societal actors in different geographical, political and cultural contexts understand agents and drivers of sustainability transformations.
