Ecological Prospects addresses pressing issues that will shape ecological awareness and activism into the next century. From a variety of perspectives, the book explores topics such as how ecological insight can serve as a management model for appropriate economic development, the possible categories that can be used to determine land use priorities, working models for environmental activism, potential paradigms for spiritually attuned environmentalism, and the role of aesthetic appreciation in the development of one's sensitivity to the environment.
Ethical Prospects: Economy, Society, and Environment aims to present and summarize new perspectives and leading-edge results in ethics reflecting on interconnected economic, social and environmental issues. The yearbook reports on innovative practices and policy reforms and provides a forum for discussion about groundbreaking theories. The main function of the yearbook is to present ideas and initiatives that lead toward responsible business practices, policies for the common good and ecological sustainability. It seeks to form a value-community of scholars, practitioners and policymakers engaged in genuine ethics in business, environmental management, and public policy.
Half a century ago, many democratic states started to respond to environmental pressures that had arisen in the wake of rapid industrialization. They set up environmental ministries and agencies and issued legislation to control the pollution of air and water and to manage industrial processes, wastes and toxic substances. This was the birth of the environmental state. With planetary ecological challenges like climate change spiraling out of control and dwarfing the environmental state’s classical tasks of environmental management, new questions about the transformative capacities of the state are becoming acute today. How large is the state’s capability to transform enhanced industrial societies into sustainable post-carbon societies? Do its new environmental functions empower the state to prioritise ecological goals over economic growth? Can the state’s environmental management capabilities be radicalised to turn it into a ‘sustainability state’? Can democracies be enhanced to enlarge the state’s transformative capacities? The Political Prospects of a Sustainability Transformation: Moving Beyond the Environmental State explores these and other questions from a variety of theoretical and empirical angles, covering the fields of democratic theory, theories of the state, political economy, political sociology, rhetoric and political philosophy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Environmental Politics.
This edited book gives a general overview on current research, focusing on geoenvironmental issues and challenges in hydrogeosciences in model regions in Asia, Europe, and America, with a focus on the Middle East and Mediterranean region and surrounding areas. This proceedings book is based on the accepted papers for oral/poster presentations at the 2nd Springer Conference of the Arabian Journal of Geosciences (CAJG-2), Tunisia 2019. It offers a broad range of recent studies that discuss the latest advances in geoenvironmental and hydrogeosciences from diverse backgrounds including climate change, geoecology, biogeochemistry, water resources management, and environmental monitoring and assessment. It shares insights on how the understanding of ecological, climatological, oceanic and hydrological processes is the key for improving practices in environment management, including the eco-responsibility, scientific integrity, and social and ethical dimensions. It is of interest to scientists, engineers, practitioners, and policymakers in the field of environmental sciences including climatology, oceanography, ecology, biogeochemistry, environmental management, hydrology, hydrogeology, and geosciences in general. In particular, this book is of great value to students and environment-related professionals for further investigations on the state of Earth systems.
Given the realities of climate change and sea-level rise, coastal cities around the world are struggling with questions of resilience. Resilience, at its core, is about desirable states of the urban social-ecological system and working to sustain those states in an uncertain and tumultuous future. How do physical conditions, ecological processes, social objectives, human politics, and history shape the prospects for resilience? Most books set out "the answer." This book sets out a process of grappling with holistic resilience from multiple perspectives, drawing on the insights and experiences of more than fifty scholars and practitioners working together to make Jamaica Bay in New York City an example for the world. Ranging from a framework for understanding resilience practice in urban watersheds to essential tools for research and practice, Prospects for Resilience is filled with information and advice for scientists, urban planners, students, and others who are working to create more resilient cities that work with, not against, nature.
Winner of the Planning Institute of Australia's 2015 Cutting Edge Research and Teaching Award! Australians from all walks of life have begun to realise the nation’s cities cannot sustain profligate growth indefinitely. Dwindling water supplies, failing food bowls, increased energy costs, more severe bushfires, severe storms, flooding, coastal erosion, rising transport expenses, housing shortages and environmental pollution are now daily news headlines. Australia’s cities may have reached their ecological limits: a new model for planning the places we live is needed. Understanding the natural cycles of the city is just as important to planning our cities as knowledge of local ordinances, indeed much more so. A profound knowledge of environmental processes is critical for successful planning in today’s world. Environmental planners take as their guiding principle the concept of designing with nature, approaching cities as living organisms that consume water, energy and raw materials, and produce waste. This metabolic view of cities means we can find new solutions to old problems, and steer our cities towards a more sustainable form of planning. Written specifically for students and professionals working in city planning in Australia, this ground-breaking new book enables Australian planners, architects and developers to get a better understanding of the fundamental principles of environmental planning for cities, showing how land, water, air, energy, wildlife and people shape our built environments, and how in turn environmental processes must be better understood if we are to make informed decisions about developing cities that are more sustainable. The book’s coverage is comprehensive: from an overview of the concepts and theories of environmental planning, through analysis of governance systems and urban environmental processes to agendas and policies for the future, all the key topics are covered in depth, with recommendations for supporting reading and an unrivalled selection of additional materials. Ideal for students, essential for professionals, Australian Environmental Planning is vital reading for more sustainable cities in a more sustainable world.
The author explores the fraught politics of energy transitions in an age of climate change. She does so through an ecological modernisation and corporate social responsibility lens which she contends shapes and underpins sustainability today. Case studies cover climate policy, unconventional gas and renewable energy.
The EPA was established to enforce the environmental laws Congress enacted during the 1970s. Yet today lethal toxins still permeate our environment, causing widespread illness and even death. Toxic Loopholes investigates these laws, and the agency charged with their enforcement, to explain why they have failed to arrest the nation's rising environmental crime wave and clean up the country's land, air and water. This book illustrates how weak laws, legal loopholes and regulatory negligence harm everyday people struggling to clean up their communities. It demonstrates that our current system of environmental protection pacifies the public with a false sense of security, dampens environmental activism, and erects legal barricades and bureaucratic barriers to shield powerful polluters from the wrath of their victims. After examining the corrosive economic and political forces undermining environmental law making and enforcement, the final chapters assess the potential for real improvement and the possibility of building cooperative international agreements to confront the rising tide of ecological perils threatening the entire planet.
Fungi Bio-prospects in Sustainable Agriculture, Environment and Nanotechnology, Volume Two: Extremophilic Fungi and Myco-mediated Environmental Management explores varied aspects of fungal biology and their relevance in microbiology and agriculture, thus allowing for better insights on basic and advanced biotechnological application in human welfare and sustainable agriculture. Chapters throw light on different sectors of fungi, including fungi in extreme circumstances, bioremediation, complex and toxic effluents, and mycoremediation. The book was designed to explore the possibility of huge fungal diversity for present and future generation in different sectors of human life. Volume Two focuses on extremophilic fungi and myco-mediated environmental management. Summarizes various aspects of fungi in the field of microbiology, sustainable agriculture, nano-technology and environment Describes the molecular approaches and gene expression of fungi Provides a deeper understanding of fungi that could be articulated in various fields
This book is the result of a conference held biannually at the Goodwin-Niering Center for Conservation Biology and Environmental Studies at Connecticut College. It uses an interdisciplinary approach to focus on important ecological impacts of acid deposition. The book combines research findings and the policy analyses of experts from different academic disciplines with the positions advanced by representatives of various nongovernmental organizations.
