Global risk potentials and their interplay with economic, social and ecological processes of change have emerged as a challenge to the international community. By presenting this report, the Council hopes to contribute constructively to an effective, efficient and objective management of the risks of global change. The approach taken by the Council is first to classify globally relevant risks and then to assign to these classes of risk both established and innovative risk assessment strategies and risk management tools. On this basis, management priorities can be set. The Council further recommends a number of cross-cutting strategies for international policies. These include worldwide alignment of liability law, creation of environmental liability funds, establishment of a United Nations Risk Assessment Panel and implementation of strategies aimed at reducing vulnerability to risk.
* Comprehensive assessment from the leading German environmental scientists of the state of the world's living resources or biosphere * Covers all aspects of the subject: biodiversity and genetic diversity, landscape and ecosystems, its role in the Earth's system and human impacts on it * Reviews global policies and research strategies on the biosphere and advocates urgent policy actions * A major, authoritative contribution to environmental science and policy Biodiversity- the planet's natural capital- is undergoing a dramatic collapse: its " Sixth Extinction". The losses, which are do to human activities and overexploitation of the biosphere, are irreversible. They are undermining the basis of future well-being and prosperity, including genetic resources and food production, climate stability, and coastal and soil protection. The scientists of the German Advisory Council on Global Change have produced an authoritative and alarming analysis of the state of the biosphere. They show that the time remaining for remedial action is fast disappearing and they set out a range of initiatives to be undertaken at different levels. Among their main urgent recommendations are: * protecting 10-20% of the global land area * an Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity to provide scientific advice * conservation of the diversity of cultivated as well as wild plant species * greater multilateral cooperation and implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity The volume makes a highly significant contribution to the scientific and policy debates on these critical issues. It will be essential reading for those engaged with them.
International institutions and structures are crucial to the management of the global environment. The present arrangements are failing to cope adequately with the scale of the task and the demands placed on them, and alternatives are urgently needed. In this second volume of World in Transition, experts in the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WGBU) analyze the problems and set out comprehensive and persuasive policies for a successful future regime. Central to the future, it argues, will be a strengthened and more effective UN Environment Programme within an alliance organized around three main objectives of assessment, organization and funding.
At the start of the 21st century, fighting poverty and protecting the environment are two of the most urgent challenges facing the international community. Environmental changes will jeopardize people's survival to an even greater extent in the future, and will hit the poor hardest. To meet these challenges, it will be essential to breathe new life into the partnership between industrialized and developing countries. It will be equally essential to combine poverty reduction with environmental protection in an integrated policy structure spanning all levels from local to global. In this report, the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) shows that global environmental policy is a prerequisite for global poverty reduction. WBGU analyses the relevant policy processes and delivers recommendations charting the way forward. 'With its interdisciplinary approach, providing a complex and systematic analysis of the poverty-environment nexus, WBGU's latest report breaks new ground. Indira Gandhi's old, convenient maxim was 'Poverty is the biggest polluter'. Put forward at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, it has been sorely misused ever since to override environmental precaution and prioritize economic development strategies instead. The new WBGU report maps out a way to shape a coherent environment and development policy. This report revitalizes the Rio spirit and gives it a robust scientific base'. Prof Dr Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Member of the German Bundestag (MdB)
This book highlights recent findings in civil and environmental engineering and urban planning, and provides an overview of the state of the art in these fields, mainly in Russia and Eastern Europe. A broad range of topics and issues in modern engineering are discussed, including construction, buildings and structures, advanced materials, innovative technology, methods and techniques in civil engineering, heating, gas supply, water supply and sewerage, foundation engineering, BIM, structural reliability, durability and monitoring, special and unique structures construction (bridge, tunnel, road, railway engineering), design and construction of hydraulic structures, concrete engineering, urban regeneration and sustainable development, urban transport system, engineering structure safety and disaster prevention, water resources engineering, water and wastewater treatment, recycling and reuse of wastewater, etc. The volume gathers selected papers from the 5th International Conference on Construction, Architecture and Technosphere Safety (ICCATS), held in Sochi, Russia in September 2021. The authors are experts in various fields of engineering, and all papers have been carefully reviewed.
This book provides a comprehensive demonstration of risk analysis as a distinct science covering risk understanding, assessment, perception, communication, management, governance and policy. It presents and discusses the key pillars of this science, and provides guidance on how to conduct high-quality risk analysis. The Science of Risk Analysis seeks to strengthen risk analysis as a field and science by summarizing and extending current work on the topic. It presents the foundation for a distinct risk field and science based on recent research, and explains the difference between applied risk analysis (to provide risk knowledge and tackle risk problems in relation to for example medicine, engineering, business or climate change) and generic risk analysis (on concepts, theories, frameworks, approaches, principles, methods and models to understand, assess, characterise, communicate, manage and govern risk). The book clarifies and describes key risk science concepts, and builds on recent foundational work conducted by the Society for Risk Analysis in order to provide new perspectives on science and risk analysis. The topics covered are accompanied by cases and examples relating to current issues throughout. This book is essential reading for risk analysis professionals, scientists, students and practitioners, and will also be of interest to scientists and practitioners from other fields who apply risk analysis in their work.
There is an increasing dissatisfaction about how risk is regulated, leading to vivid debates about the use of 'risk assessment' and 'precaution'. As a result, academics, government officials and industry leaders are calling for new approaches and fresh ideas. This book provides a historical and topical perspective on the alternative concept of 'Tolerability of Risk' and its concrete regulatory applications. In the UK, Tolerability of Risk has been developed into a sophisticated framework, particularly within the health and safety sectors. It is expected to guide decision-makers when applying their legal obligation of keeping risks as low as practically reasonable. Could Tolerability of Risk become a wider source of inspiration across the full scope of risk analysis and management? Written by leading academics and risk practitioners from industry and government, The Tolerability of Risk presents a summary of theoretical perspectives on risk approaches, providing a detailed elicitation of the methods and approaches used to build the Tolerability of Risk framework and examining the prospect of universal application of that framework. From nuclear power to environmental pollution, climate change and drug testing, the Tolerability of Risk framework may offer a workable, pragmatic solution for balancing risks against the costs involved in controlling them, as well as developing the institutional capacity to make effective decisions in all jurisdictions worldwide.
Risk Governance is a tour de force. Every risk manager, every risk analyst, every risk researcher must read this book - it is the demarcation point for all further advances in risk policy and risk research. Renn provides authoritative guidance on how to manage risks based on a definitive synthesis of the research literature. The skill with which he builds practical recommendations from solid science is unprecedented. Thomas Dietz, Director, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, USA A masterpiece of new knowledge and wisdom with illustrative examples of tested applications to realworld cases. The book is recommendable also to interested students in different disciplines as a timely textbook on 'risk beyond risk'. Norio Okada, Full Professor and Director at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan There are classic environmental works such as The Tragedy of the Commons by Hardin, Risk Society by Beck, The Theory of Communicative Action by Habermas, and the seminal volumes by Ostrom on governing the commons. Renns book fits right into this series of important milestones of environmental studies. Jochen Jaeger, Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada Risk Governance provides a valuable survey of the whole field of risk and demonstrates how scientific, economic, political and civil society actors can participate in inclusive risk governance. Jobst Conrad, Senior Scientist, Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany Renn offers a remarkably fair-minded and systematic approach to bringing together the diverse fields that have something to say about 'risk'. Risk Governance moves us along the path from the noisy, formative stage of thinking about risk to one with a stronger empirical, theoretical, and analytical foundation. Baruch Fischhoff, PhD, Howard Heinz University Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA 'I cannot describe how impressed I am at the breadth and coherence of Renn's career's work! Written with remarkable clarity and minimal technical jargon... [this] should be required reading in risk courses!' John Graham, former director of the Harvard Risk Center and former deputy director of the Office of Budget and Management of the Unites States Administration This book, for the first time, brings together and updates the groundbreaking work of renowned risk theorist and researcher Ortwin Renn, integrating the major disciplinary concepts of risk in the social, engineering and natural sciences. The book opens with the context of risk handling before flowing through the core topics of assessment, evaluation, perception, management and communication, culminating in a look at the transition from risk management to risk governance and a glimpse at a new understanding of risk in (post)modern societies.
Although there is no denial of climate justice, there has been a persistent lack of practical joined-up actions regarding the creation of an international climate institution. However, politicians and academic researchers have been working together to find solutions. This new book is an attempt to put forward constructive approaches to climate security and justice, building upon the inputs from the wide-ranging debates that took place at the CASS Forum on Climate Justice and the Carbon Budget Approach in Beijing (April 2010). The purpose of this prestigious international conference was to construct an international climate regime and to help promote climate justice. It also called on governments, particularly governments in developed countries, to bear the historical responsibility of climate change. Climate change is a controversial topic worldwide today and the international regime and corresponding actions will inevitably have a lasting and profound influence on the world economy and international politics. At its thirteenth session, held in Bali, Indonesia, at the end of 2007, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Bali Action Plan, initiating a new process of negotiations on long-term cooperative actions under the Convention with the goal of reaching international agreements on an international climate regime beyond 2012 at the fifteenth session of the Conference to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the end of 2009. The key factors in the present international climate negotiations are a shared vision of global long-term cooperative actions, mitigation, adaptation, technology and finance, and their core issue is how to reach an agreement for equitable burden-sharing of obligations for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions or allocation of emission entitlements in accordance with the concrete conditions of various countries and to ensure the implementation of such an agreement under an appropriate international regime. As the largest developing country in the world, China plays an important role in international climate negotiations and is under increasing international pressure.The existing Kyoto Protocol model takes the level of emissions in 1990 as a base and determines the emission reduction obligations of each developed country through negotiation. The findings gathered together in this book break through the fixed pattern of thinking of the Kyoto Protocol and, based on the theory and methodology of the basic carbon emissions needed for human development, studies a carbon budget proposal for global greenhouse gas emission reductions. This proposal not only better embodies the principle of "e;common but differentiated responsibilities"e; established by the Climate Convention, but will also be able to realize global goals for mid- and long-term emission reductions. It represents a comprehensive proposal for developing a more equitable and more effective international climate regime.The CASS Forum on Climate Justice and the Carbon Budget Approach in Beijing (April 2010) was organised in association with the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Misereor.
Continuing the search for greater reflectivity regarding accounting’s role in society, this volume identifies the many ways accounting contributes to knowledge creation and the consequences in socio-economic realms.
