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Increasingly, the planet is threatened by a wide variety of real and potential complex environmental problems, including the warming of the earth, the loss of biodiversity, waste mismanagement, deforestation, desertification, hazardous waste disposal, acid precipitation, and pollution of many sorts. Although many of these problems are global in scope, they are sometimes best addressed at local levels where the relationships between cause and effect may be best understood. This interdisciplinary volume brings together leading environmentalists and public policy makers in science, law, economics, business, and government who explore the connections among global environmental issues and the local initiatives needed to address those issues. The volume begins with an overview of fundamental issues, including the problems of economic development and safe-guarding the environment. Air quality issues are examined next, followed by ocean and landbased sources of marine pollution, coastal preservation, water quality, nuclear power, environmental health and information, and a review of social and cultural perspectives. For those beginning their examination of environmental concerns, the volume provides an understandable introduction to the full spectrum of current issues; for the expert, the book offers an accurate view of current thinking on the problems.
This special issue of STI Review focuses on technology and sustainable development.
Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability—at the level of literature, history, and politics—to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today’s climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres. In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence—a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer’s summons to confront the most urgent task of our time.
According to the United Nations, three out of five people will be living in cities worldwide by the year 2030. The United States continues to experience urbanization with its vast urban corridors on the east and west coasts. Although urban weather is driven by large synoptic and meso-scale features, weather events unique to the urban environment arise from the characteristics of the typical urban setting, such as large areas covered by buildings of a variety of heights; paved streets and parking areas; means to supply electricity, natural gas, water, and raw materials; and generation of waste heat and materials. Urban Meteorology: Forecasting, Monitoring, and Meeting Users' Needs is based largely on the information provided at a Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate community workshop. This book describes the needs for end user communities, focusing in particular on needs that are not being met by current urban-level forecasting and monitoring. Urban Meteorology also describes current and emerging meteorological forecasting and monitoring capabilities that have had and will likely have the most impact on urban areas, some of which are not being utilized by the relevant end user communities. Urban Meteorology explains that users of urban meteorological information need high-quality information available in a wide variety of formats that foster its use and within time constraints set by users' decision processes. By advancing the science and technology related to urban meteorology with input from key end user communities, urban meteorologists can better meet the needs of diverse end users. To continue the advancement within the field of urban meteorology, there are both short-term needs-which might be addressed with small investments but promise large, quick returns-as well as future challenges that could require significant efforts and investments.
Increased global demand for land posits the need for well-designed country-level land policies to protect long-held rights, facilitate land access and address any constraints that land policy may pose for broader growth. While the implementation of land reforms can be a lengthy process, the need to swiftly identify key land policy challenges and devise responses that allow the monitoring of progress, in a way that minimizes conflicts and supports broader development goals, is clear. The Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) makes a substantive contribution to the land sector by providing a quick and innovative tool to monitor land governance at the country level. The LGAF offers a comprehensive diagnostic tool that covers five main areas for policy intervention: Legal and institutional framework; Land use planning, management and taxation; Management of public land; Public provision of land information; and Dispute resolution and conflict management. The LGAF assesses these areas through a set of detailed indicators that are rated on a scale of pre-coded statements (from lack of good governance to good practice). While land governance can be highly technical in nature and tends to be addressed in a partial and sporadic manner, the LGAF posits a tool for a comprehensive assessment, taking into account the broad range of issues that land governance encompasses, while enabling those unfamiliar with land to grasp its full complexity. The LGAF will make it possible for policymakers to make sense of the technical levels of the land sector, benchmark governance, identify areas that require further attention and monitor progress. It is intended to assist countries in prioritizing reforms in the land sector by providing a holistic diagnostic review that can inform policy dialogue in a clear and targeted manner. In addition to presenting the LGAF tool, this book includes detailed case studies on its implementation in five selected countries: Peru, the Kyrgyz Republic, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Tanzania.
As the climate changes, agriculture needs to transform so that it becomes more profitable, sustainable and resilient. The smallholder farmers and producers who often experience the worst impacts of climate change want practical solutions that work for them and their families. This issue of Spore highlights CTA’s role supporting one such approach, climate smart agriculture (CSA). Featuring positive and inspiring case studies and field reports from across ACP countries, it looks at how farmers, fisheries, young people and community organisations have been working to address the impacts and challenges of climate change.
Every four years since 2004, the Copenhagen Consensus Center has organized and hosted a high profile thought experiment about how a hypothetical extra $75 billion of development assistance money might best be spent to solve twelve of the major crises facing the world today. Collated in this specially commissioned book, a group of more than 50 experts make their cases for investment, discussing how to combat problems ranging from armed conflicts, corruption and trade barriers, to natural disasters, hunger, education and climate change. For each case, 'Alternative Perspectives' are also included to provide a critique and make other suggestions for investment. In addition, a panel of senior economists, including four Nobel Laureates, rank the attractiveness of each policy proposal in terms of its anticipated cost-benefit ratio. This thought-provoking book opens up debate, encouraging readers to come up with their own rankings and decide which solutions are smarter than others.
The school of thought surrounding the urban ecosystem has increasingly become in vogue among researchers worldwide. Since half of the world’s population lives in cities, urban ecosystem services have become essential to human health and wellbeing. Rapid urban growth has forced sustainable urban developers to rethink important steps by updating and, to some degree, recreating the human–ecosystem service linkage. Assessing, as well as estimating the losses of ecosystem services can denote the essential effects of urbanization and increasingly indicate where cities fall short. This book contains 13 thoroughly refereed contributions published within the Special Issue “Urban Ecosystem Services”. The book addresses topics such as nature-based solutions, green space planning, green infrastructure, rain gardens, climate change, and more. The contributions highlight new findings for landscape architects, urban planners, and policymakers. Important future cities research is considered by looking at the system connectivity between the social and ecological sphere—via varying forms of urban planning, management, and governance. The book is supported by methods and models that utilize an urban sustainability and ecosystem service-centric focus by adding knowledge-base and real-world solutions into the urbanization phenomenon.
This timely special issue looks at a current pressing societal challenge that is truly global in its existence but very local in the way it plays out in various geographical, social and political contexts. Terrorism and extremism are undoubtedly among the biggest problems the world is facing today and is leaving in its wake a trail of death and destruction where the human and social costs are perhaps more significant than wars fought between countries on the world stage. These realities breed suspicion, hatred and feelings of revenge and invariably result in a spiral of violence that seemingly has no end. Not only is there a need to explore the various factors leading to violent youth radicalisation, it is clear that young people need to be considered not as victims ‘at risk’ but rather as responsible agents of positive change. This issue focuses on violent youth radicalisation in the context of Professor Gavrielides’ ‘The Youth Empowerment and Innovation Project (YEIP)’ which looked at the problem of violent youth radicalisation across seven European Countries. The project sought to propose a uniquely different way of combatting violent youth radicalisation by proposing an alternative to punitive means so often favoured by governments. That alternative proposed was to use Positive psychology and the Good Lives model to intervene with young people at risk of violent radicalisation focusing on positive identity and well-being on the premise that young people who had a positive view of themselves would be less likely to be drawn into violent radicalisation.