Climate change will bring great suffering to communities, individuals and ecosystems. Those least responsible for the problem will suffer the most. Justice demands urgent action to reverse its causes and impacts. In this provocative new book, Paul G. Harris brings together a collection of original essays to explore alternative, innovative approaches to understanding and implementing climate justice in the future. Through investigations informed by philosophy, politics, sociology, law and economics, this Research Agenda reveals how climate change is a matter of justice and makes concrete proposals for more effective mitigation.
Challenging the mainstream view of the environment as either threatening or valuable, this book considers how geographic knowledge can be applied to offer a more nuanced understanding. Framed within geopolitics and using a range of methodologies, the chapters encapsulate different approaches to demonstrate how selective forms of knowledge, measurement, and spatial focus both embody and stabilize power, shaping how people perceive and respond to changing features of human-environment interactions.
This is the third volume of papers in the topical area of environmental management. Arising from work done by the International Centre for the Environment at the University of Bath, the papers address inter-disciplinary environmental themes particularly from a business and management perspective.
Presenting critical insights on how economic activity is constrained by the environment's ability to provide material and energy resources, this timely Research Agenda explores how humanity shapes, and is shaped by, environmental change and sustainability challenges. Chapters highlight how, under these constraints, people may seek to improve their lives and standards of living without undermining the abilities of others to do so now or in the future. With contributions from top economic scholars, as well as from a range of other disciplines including ethics, law, and the physical and life sciences, this book explores how interdisciplinary insights can be integrated to provide meaningful investment and policy advice. Offering diverse understandings of the topic from both the Global North and South, this Research Agenda challenges previous economic conceptualizations of human-environment interactions, exploring resource use and environmental impact from micro- and macro-economic perspectives. Students of environmental and ecological economics will find this to be a thought-provoking and stimulating read. The suggestions for future research and use of clear case studies will also prove valuable for environmental law and ethics scholars, as well as environmental policy-makers. Contributors include:D.C. Andersen, Y. Bramoullé, L.P. Breckenridge, M. Faber, M. Frick, A. Kander, R. Kemp, D. Malghan, R.B. Norgaard, C. Orset, S.V. Ramani, M. Ruth, J. Sager, M. Sagoff, M.R. Sers, D.I. Stern, D.J. Thampapillai, E. van Leeuwen, M.d.M.R. Varas, P.A. Victor
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial} Evaluating achievements, challenges and future avenues for research, this book explores how new dimensions of knowledge and practice contest, reshape and advance traditional understandings of sustainable consumption governance.
This book argues that the relationship between cities and climate change is entering a new and more urgent phase. Thirteen contributions from a range of leading scholars explore the need to rethink and reorient urban life in response to climatic change. Split into four parts it begins by asking ‘What is climate urbanism?’ and exploring key features from different locations and epistemological traditions. The second section examines the transformative potential of climate urbanism to challenge social and environmental injustices within and between cities. In the third part authors interrogate current knowledge paradigms underpinning climate and urban science and how they shape contemporary urban trajectories. The final section focuses on the future, envisaging climate urbanism as a new communal project, and focuses on the role of citizens and non-state actors in driving transformative action. Consolidating debates on climate urbanism, the book highlights the opportunities and tensions of urban environmental policy, providing a framework for researchers and practitioners to respond to the urban challenges of a radically climate-changed world.
People's desire to understand the environments in which they live is a natural one. People spend most of their time in spaces and structures designed, built, and managed by humans, and it is estimated that people in developed countries now spend 90 percent of their lives indoors. As people move from homes to workplaces, traveling in cars and on transit systems, microorganisms are continually with and around them. The human-associated microbes that are shed, along with the human behaviors that affect their transport and removal, make significant contributions to the diversity of the indoor microbiome. The characteristics of "healthy" indoor environments cannot yet be defined, nor do microbial, clinical, and building researchers yet understand how to modify features of indoor environmentsâ€"such as building ventilation systems and the chemistry of building materialsâ€"in ways that would have predictable impacts on microbial communities to promote health and prevent disease. The factors that affect the environments within buildings, the ways in which building characteristics influence the composition and function of indoor microbial communities, and the ways in which these microbial communities relate to human health and well-being are extraordinarily complex and can be explored only as a dynamic, interconnected ecosystem by engaging the fields of microbial biology and ecology, chemistry, building science, and human physiology. This report reviews what is known about the intersection of these disciplines, and how new tools may facilitate advances in understanding the ecosystem of built environments, indoor microbiomes, and effects on human health and well-being. It offers a research agenda to generate the information needed so that stakeholders with an interest in understanding the impacts of built environments will be able to make more informed decisions.
Urban biodiversity is an increasingly popular topic among researchers. Worldwide, thousands of research projects are unravelling how urbanisation impacts the biodiversity of cities and towns, as well as its benefits for people and the environment through ecosystem services. Exciting scientific discoveries are made on a daily basis. However, researchers often lack time and opportunity to communicate these findings to the community and those in charge of managing, planning and designing for urban biodiversity. On the other hand, urban practitioners frequently ask researchers for more comprehensible information and actionable tools to guide their actions. This book is designed to fill this cultural and communicative gap by discussing a selection of topics related to urban biodiversity, as well as its benefits for people and the urban environment. It provides an interdisciplinary overview of scientifically grounded knowledge vital for current and future practitioners in charge of urban biodiversity management, its conservation and integration into urban planning. Topics covered include pests and invasive species, rewilding habitats, the contribution of a diverse urban agriculture to food production, implications for human well-being, and how to engage the public with urban conservation strategies. For the first time, world-leading researchers from five continents convene to offer a global interdisciplinary perspective on urban biodiversity narrated with a simple but rigorous language. This book synthesizes research at a level suitable for both students and professionals working in nature conservation and urban planning and management.
Science and technology are embedded in virtually every aspect of modern life. As a result, people face an increasing need to integrate information from science with their personal values and other considerations as they make important life decisions about medical care, the safety of foods, what to do about climate change, and many other issues. Communicating science effectively, however, is a complex task and an acquired skill. Moreover, the approaches to communicating science that will be most effective for specific audiences and circumstances are not obvious. Fortunately, there is an expanding science base from diverse disciplines that can support science communicators in making these determinations. Communicating Science Effectively offers a research agenda for science communicators and researchers seeking to apply this research and fill gaps in knowledge about how to communicate effectively about science, focusing in particular on issues that are contentious in the public sphere. To inform this research agenda, this publication identifies important influences â€" psychological, economic, political, social, cultural, and media-related â€" on how science related to such issues is understood, perceived, and used.
How do people react to the visual character of their surroundings? What can planners do to improve the aesthetic quality of these surroundings? Too often in environmental design, visual quality--aesthetics--is misunderstood as only a minor concern, dependent on volatile taste and thus undefinable. Yet a substantial body of research indicates the importance of visual quality in the environment to the public and has uncovered systematic patterns of human response to visual attributes of the built environment. Efforts to understand environmental aesthetics have been undertaken by investigators from such diverse fields as landscape architecture, environmental psychology, geography, philosophy, architecture, and city planning. As a result the relevant information is scattered and not readily available to professionals and policy makers. The book brings together classic and new contributions by distinguished workers in different disciplines. It explores theory and data on preferences in the visual environment, and also addresses the practical application of aesthetic criteria in design, planning and public policy. Promising directions for future research are identified.
