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Two remarkable tales woven together - the story of the Kaokoveld, an arid eden in the remote north-west of Namibia, so nearly lost, but regained to become one of Africa's iconic wildlife tourism destinations, and also the story of a young man's search for an African way to do conservation in Africa. Garth Owen-Smith first visited the Kaokoveld in 1967. It was a life-changing experience. His unconventional ideas challenged both the conservation establishment and the former South African regime. Despite this, community-based conservation was pioneered in the Kaokoveld and today Namibia is a world leader in this field. But the early years - when the foundation for this ground-breaking approach to conservation was laid - are largely forgotten and untold. An Arid Eden: A Personal Account of Conservation in the Kaokoveld brings those years alive through the eyes of Owen-Smith, spanning four-and-a-half decades of extraordinary dedication, passion and achievement. The author and his partner Dr Margaret Jacobsohn have won some of the world's most prestigious conservation awards for their work in Namibia, which has always challenged convential wisdom. The NGO they founded continues to break conservation, agricultural and rural development paradigms.
A history of 150 years of social-ecological transformations in the arid savannah landscape of Namibia.
Irrigation came to the arid West in a wave of optimism about the power of water to make the desert bloom. Mark Fiege’s fascinating and innovative study of irrigation in southern Idaho’s Snake River valley describes a complex interplay of human and natural systems. Using vast quantities of labor, irrigators built dams, excavated canals, laid out farms, and brought millions of acres into cultivation. But at each step, nature rebounded and compromised the intended agricultural order. The result was a new and richly textured landscape made of layer upon layer of technology and intractable natural forces—one that engineers and farmers did not control with the precision they had anticipated. Irrigated Eden vividly portrays how human actions inadvertently helped to create a strange and sometimes baffling ecology. Winner of the Idaho Library Association Book Award, 1999 Winner of the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award, Forest History Society, 1999-2000
Dan Dagget believes that humanity can have a positive effect on the land. He demonstrates case after case of positive human engagement in the environment and of managed ecosystems and restored areas that are richer, more diverse, and healthier than unmanaged ones. Much of pre-Columbian America, he contends, was not a pristine wilderness but an ancient garden managed over millennia by native peoples who shaped the plant and animal communities around them to the mutual benefit of all. Dagget recommends a new kind of environmentalism based on management, science, evolution, and holism, and served by humans who enrich the environment even as they benefit from it. His new environmentalism offers hopeful solutions to the current ecological crisis and a new purpose for our human energies and ideals. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the earth and anyone seeking a viable way for our burgeoning human population to continue to live upon it.
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How technological advances and colonial fears inspired utopian geoengineering projects during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries From the 1870s to the mid-twentieth century, European explorers, climatologists, colonial officials, and planners were avidly interested in large-scale projects that might actively alter the climate. Uncovering this history, Desert Edens looks at how arid environments and an increasing anxiety about climate in the colonial world shaped this upsurge in ideas about climate engineering. From notions about the transformation of deserts into forests to Nazi plans to influence the climates of war-torn areas, Philipp Lehmann puts the early climate change debate in its environmental, intellectual, and political context, and considers the ways this legacy reverberates in the present climate crisis. Lehmann examines some of the most ambitious climate-engineering projects to emerge in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Confronted with the Sahara in the 1870s, the French developed concepts for a flooding project that would lead to the creation of a man-made Sahara Sea. In the 1920s, German architect Herman Sörgel proposed damming the Mediterranean in order to geoengineer an Afro-European continent called “Atlantropa,” which would fit the needs of European settlers. Nazi designs were formulated to counteract the desertification of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Despite ideological and technical differences, these projects all incorporated and developed climate change theories and vocabulary. They also combined expressions of an extreme environmental pessimism with a powerful technological optimism that continue to shape the contemporary moment. Focusing on the intellectual roots, intended effects, and impact of early measures to modify the climate, Desert Edens investigates how the technological imagination can be inspired by pressing fears about the environment and civilization.
Botswana, many say, represents the last of Old Africa. For a year, between 1988 and 1989, the author roamed the wetlands and deserts of northern Botswana. This book is a testament not only to the wondrous wildlife of the region, but also to the author's extraordinary courage, skill, and photographic eye.
This collection of papers examines water management in two of the world’s prominent, arid transboundary areas facing similar challenges. In the Middle East, the chronically water-short Israeli-Palestinian region has recognized the need both to conserve and supplement its traditional water sources. Across the globe on the North American continent, Arizona—a state in the southwestern United States bordering Mexico—relies significantly on the overallocated Colorado River, as well as on non-renewable groundwater supplies. For both regions, sustainable and cost-effective solutions clearly require innovative, multifaceted, and conflict-avoiding approaches. This volume is predicated on the role that “science diplomacy” can play in resolving difficult water-related issues. The history of natural-resources disputes confirms that the scientific approach can reveal ways to overcome division. Experience has shown that scientifically-trained experts who are sensitive to sociopolitical conditions can assist in developing and evaluating feasible water management solutions. The insights and expertise of a distinguished and diverse group of researchers fill these chapters. Contributors include established authorities as well as a number of budding scholars. In a field traditionally dominated by males and by engineers, this collection benefits from significant gender diversity and contributions from a broad spectrum of disciplines. Policymakers, water managers, specialists such as university researchers and consultants, and citizens all have an interest in finding sustainable strategies to address the many water-management issues discussed in this volume. The assembled papers underscore that much work remains to be done.
Among the Mansions of Eden is a fascinating and dishy exploration of Beverly Hills -- a rarefied community that has become a part of our country's mythos, a city renowned for its ostentatious displays of wealth. It takes you behind the gates of the rich and famous for an insider's view of the elite's rapturous and tragic attempts to realize the American Dream. From Rodeo Drive to Beverly Hills High School, Among the Mansions of Eden tells the city's story by capturing the individuals who are emblematic of various factions of Beverly Hills society: The cast of unforgettable characters includes the late Milton Berle, who spent his last days surrounded by aging cronies in the cavernous ballroom of the Friars Club, haunted by the ghosts of the past; Fred Hayman, a former banquet manager who opened a boutique called Giorgio and transformed Rodeo Drive from a provincial retail district to a phantasmagoric midway that caters to the world's most affluent shoppers; Gavin de Becker, a poor kid from a broken home who became the security broker to the stars; Mark Hughes, the health-supplement wunderkind who parlayed a trunkful of vitamin pills into a billion-dollar empire known as Herbalife and planned to build his own San Simeon on the last undeveloped mountaintop in Beverly Hills; Jim Forester, a teenager with an overriding passion for a righteous buzz that led him on a Dante-esque journey through the city's underworld of pushers, delinquents, scam artists, and sleazoids; and Norm Zadeh, who used the millions he made as a hedge-fund manager to start a girlie magazine, fill a Beverly Hills mansion with curvaceous nymphets, and emulate the life of Hugh Hefner. You'll also meet a fascinating array of con artists, hucksters, and libido-crazed pleasure seekers and gun fetishists who are willing to resort to whatever means necessary to steal a piece of the Beverly Hills Dream. Among the Mansions of Eden weaves their individual stories into a spellbinding tale of wealth, fame, and the lust for land, power, and social status in the most opulent city in America.
America's early 1900's dream of greening the western desert through irrigation drew hundreds of would-be farmers to the Columbia River hamlet of White Bluffs in Washington State. Yearning for a healthy, possibly lucrative life in the wild desert setting, they struggled with nature, railroads, power companies, commission houses, water systems and the ever-disappointing market. Through oral histories, letters, photographs and meticulous research, author Nancy Mendenhall tells the story of how, despite all the adversities, the orchardists built a remarkable, thriving community until it was cut short by events of World War Two. At times reading like an epic novel, this rich social history shows in detail the hard roles of pioneer women, children and their men, and delves deeply into their emotional and intellectual lives.