Download Free Catastrophes Confrontations And Constraints Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Catastrophes Confrontations And Constraints and write the review.

A ground-breaking study on how natural disasters can escalate or defuse wars, insurgencies, and other strife. Armed conflict and natural disasters have plagued the twenty-first century. Not since the end of World War II has the number of armed conflicts been higher. At the same time, natural disasters have increased in frequency and intensity over the past two decades, their impacts worsened by climate change, urbanization, and persistent social and economic inequalities. Providing the first comprehensive analysis of the interplay between natural disasters and armed conflict, Catastrophes, Confrontations, and Constraints explores the extent to which disasters facilitate the escalation or abatement of armed conflicts—as well as the ways and contexts in which combatants exploit these catastrophes. Tobias Ide utilizes both qualitative insights and quantitative data to explain the link between disasters and the (de-)escalation of armed conflict and presents over thirty case studies of earthquakes, droughts, floods, and storms in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. He also examines the impact of COVID-19 on armed conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and the Philippines. Catastrophes, Confrontations, and Constraints is an invaluable addition to current debates on climate change, environmental stress, and security. Professionals and students will greatly appreciate the wealth of timely data it provides for their own investigations.
A foundational analysis of the co-evolution of the internet and international relations, examining resultant challenges for individuals, organizations, firms, and states. In our increasingly digital world, data flows define the international landscape as much as the flow of materials and people. How is cyberspace shaping international relations, and how are international relations shaping cyberspace? In this book, Nazli Choucri and David D. Clark offer a foundational analysis of the co-evolution of cyberspace (with the internet as its core) and international relations, examining resultant challenges for individuals, organizations, and states. The authors examine the pervasiveness of power and politics in the digital realm, finding that the internet is evolving much faster than the tools for regulating it. This creates a “co-evolution dilemma”—a new reality in which digital interactions have enabled weaker actors to influence or threaten stronger actors, including the traditional state powers. Choucri and Clark develop a new method for addressing control in the internet age, “control point analysis,” and apply it to a variety of situations, including major actors in the international and digital realms: the United States, China, and Google. In doing so they lay the groundwork for a new international relations theory that reflects the reality in which we live—one in which the international and digital realms are inextricably linked and evolving together.
Disasters are resulting in unprecedented levels of destruction across the world. These shocks and disruptions affect the functioning and sustainability of agricultural production and threaten the livelihoods of millions of people reliant on agrifood systems. Reducing the impact of disasters in agriculture requires a better understanding of the extent to which these events produce negative impacts in agriculture and necessitates an investigation into the underlying risks that make agriculture vulnerable to the effects of disasters. The FAO flagship report on ‘The Impact of Disasters on Agriculture and Food Security’ provides a timely and comprehensive overview of how disasters are affecting agriculture and food security around the world. Building on previous work of the FAO on this topic, the report estimates losses caused by disasters on agricultural production over the past three decades and delves into the diverse threats and impacts affecting the crops, livestock, forestry, and fisheries and aquaculture subsectors. It analyzes the complex interplay of underlying risks, such as climate change, pandemics, epidemics and armed conflicts, and how they drive disaster risk in agriculture and agrifood systems at large. The report provides examples of actions and strategies for investing in resilience and proactively addressing risks in agriculture. It demonstrates ways to mainstream disaster risk into agricultural practices and policies and calls for a deeper understanding of the context in which these solutions are implemented.
This book offers a multidisciplinary exploration of how climate change is impacting conflicts, contention, and competition in the world. The volume examines how climate change is creating and exacerbating insecurities for millions of people globally, and how states, inter-governmental bodies, and others are attempting to meet challenges today and in the near and medium term. It shows that climate change insecurity is relevant to a battery of security areas, including warfighting, stabilisation, human security, influence, and resilience and capacity building. The volume provides insights into how climate change has and will impact security at different scales and in different localities, including national and ethnic tensions, food and water security, resource competition, mass displacement, and even the recruitment profiles and operations of violent and extremist organisations. With contributions from pioneering researchers and practitioners, the book discusses shifting operational requirements and responsibilities, and the need for clarity around the size and shape of capacity gaps. In addition to practitioners and policy-makers working in these areas, the book will be of significant interest to researchers and students of defence studies, peace and conflict studies, climate change and environmental security, and International Relations.
Historical Dictionary and Environmentalism, Third Edition provides a balanced and wide-ranging overview of the most important events, issues, organizations, ideas, and people shaping the direction of environmentalism worldwide. This book is global in scope, covering a large range of perspectives and countries with a focus on the period since 1960. This book contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 400 cross-referenced entries on organizations, people, issues, events, and countries shaping environmentalism. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about environmentalism.
Develops and applies an innovative theoretical framework that links domestic economic vulnerabilities to national policy positions and international management in the context of Atlantic fisheries. The rapid expansion of the fishing industry in the last century has raised major concerns over the long-term viability of many fish species. International fisheries organizations have failed to prevent the overfishing of many stocks, but succeeded in curtailing harvests for some key fisheries. In Adaptive Governance, D. G. Webster proposes a new perspective to improve our understanding of both success and failure in international resource regimes. She develops a theoretical approach, the vulnerability response framework, which can increase understanding of countries' positions on the management of international fisheries based on linkages between domestic vulnerabilities and national policy positions. Vulnerability, mainly economic in this context, acts as an indicator for domestic susceptibility to the increasing competition associated with open access and related stock declines. Because of this relationship, vulnerability can also be used to trace the trajectory of nations' positions on fisheries management as they seek political alternatives to economic problems. Webster tests this framework by using it to predict national positions for eight cases drawn from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). These studies reveal that there is considerable variance in the management measures ICCAT has adopted--both between different species and in dealing with the same species over time--and that much of this variance can be traced to vulnerability response behavior. Little attention has been paid to the ways in which international regimes change over time. Webster's innovative approach illuminates the pressures for change that are generated by economic competition and overexploitation in Atlantic fisheries. Her work also identifies patterns of adaptive governance, as national responses to such pressures culminate in patterns of change in international management.
A multidisciplinary examination of alternative framings of environmental problems, with using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. Does being an environmentalist mean caring about wild nature? Or is environmentalism synonymous with concern for future human well-being, or about a fair apportionment of access to the earth's resources and a fair sharing of pollution burdens? Environmental problems are undoubtedly one of the most salient public issues of our time, yet environmental scholarship and action is marked by a fragmentation of ideas and approaches because of the multiple ways in which these environmental problems are “framed.” Diverse framings prioritize different values and explain problems in various ways, thereby suggesting different solutions. Are more inclusive framings possible? Will this enable more socially relevant, impactful research and more concerted action and practice? This book takes a multidisciplinary look at these questions using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. It explores how different forms of environmentalism are shaped by different normative and theoretical positions, and attempts to bridge these divides. Individual perspectives are complemented by comprehensive syntheses of the differing framings in each sector. By self-reflectively exploring how researchers study and mobilize evidence about environmental problems, the book opens up the possibility of alternative framings to advance collaborative and integrated understanding of environmental problems and sustainability challenges.
The term 'natural disaster' is often used to refer to natural events such as earthquakes, hurricanes or floods. However, the phrase 'natural disaster' suggests an uncritical acceptance of a deeply engrained ideological and cultural myth. At Risk questions this myth and argues that extreme natural events are not disasters until a vulnerable group of people is exposed. The updated new edition confronts a further ten years of ever more expensive and deadly disasters and discusses disaster not as an aberration, but as a signal failure of mainstream 'development'. Two analytical models are provided as tools for understanding vulnerability. One links remote and distant 'root causes' to 'unsafe conditions' in a 'progression of vulnerability'. The other uses the concepts of 'access' and 'livelihood' to understand why some households are more vulnerable than others. Examining key natural events and incorporating strategies to create a safer world, this revised edition is an important resource for those involved in the fields of environment and development studies.
Globalization today is as much a problem for international harmony as it is a necessary condition of living together on our planet. Increasing interconnectedness in ecology, economy, technology, and politics has brought nations and societies into even closer contact, creating acute demands for cooperation. Earthly Politics argues that in the coming decades global governance will have to accommodate differences even as it obliterates distance, and will have to respect many aspects of the local while developing institutions that transcend localism. This book analyzes a variety of environmental-governance approaches that balance the local and the global in order to encourage new, more flexible frameworks of global governance. On the theoretical level, it draws on insights from the field of science and technology studies to enrich our understanding of environmental-development politics. On the pragmatic level, it discusses the design of institutions and processes to address problems of environmental governance that increasingly refuse to remain within national boundaries. The cases in the book display the crucial relationship between knowledge and power—the links between the ways we understand environmental problems and the ways we manage them—and illustrate the different paths by which knowledge-power formations are arrived at, contested, defended, or set aside. By examining how local and global actors ranging from the World Bank to the Makah tribe in the Pacific Northwest respond to the contradictions of globalization, the authors identify some of the conditions for creating more effective engagement between the global and the local in environmental governance.