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"ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION"
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Novel ecosystems
Land conversion, climate change and species invasions are contributing to the widespread emergence of novel ecosystems, which demand a shift in how we think about traditional approaches to conservation, restoration and environmental management. They are novel because they exist without historical precedents and are self-sustaining. Traditional approaches emphasizing native species and historical continuity are challenged by novel ecosystems that deliver critical ecosystems services or are simply immune to practical restorative efforts. Some fear that, by raising the issue of novel ecosystems, we are simply paving the way for a more laissez-faire attitude to conservation and restoration. Regardless of the range of views and perceptions about novel ecosystems, their existence is becoming ever more obvious and prevalent in today's rapidly changing world. In this first comprehensive volume to look at the ecological, social, cultural, ethical and policy dimensions of novel ecosystems, the authors argue these altered systems are overdue for careful analysis and that we need to figure out how to intervene in them responsibly. This book brings together researchers from a range of disciplines together with practitioners and policy makers to explore the questions surrounding novel ecosystems. It includes chapters on key concepts and methodologies for deciding when and how to intervene in systems, as well as a rich collection of case studies and perspective pieces. It will be a valuable resource for researchers, managers and policy makers interested in the question of how humanity manages and restores ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.
A companion website with additional resources is available at www.wiley.com/go/hobbs/ecosystems [http://www.wiley.com/go/hobbs/ecosystems]
eBook
Natural wonders
\"Discusses the damage to natural wonders and how to best preserve them\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the struggle to slow global warming
Even as the evidence of global warming mounts, the international response to this serious threat is coming unraveled. The United States has formally withdrawn from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol; other key nations are facing difficulty in meeting their Kyoto commitments; and developing countries face no limit on their emissions of the gases that cause global warming. In this clear and cogent book-reissued in paperback with an afterword that comments on recent events--David Victor explains why the Kyoto Protocol was never likely to become an effective legal instrument. He explores how its collapse offers opportunities to establish a more realistic alternative.
Global warming continues to dominate environmental news as legislatures worldwide grapple with the process of ratification of the December 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The collapse of the November 2000 conference at the Hague showed clearly how difficult it will be to bring the Kyoto treaty into force. Yet most politicians, policymakers, and analysts hailed it as a vital first step in slowing greenhouse warming. David Victor was not among them.
Kyoto's fatal flaw, Victor argues, is that it can work only if emissions trading works. The Protocol requires industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to specific targets. Crucially, the Protocol also provides for so-called \"emissions trading,\" whereby nations could offset the need for rapid cuts in their own emissions by buying emissions credits from other countries. But starting this trading system would require creating emission permits worth two trillion dollars--the largest single invention of assets by voluntary international treaty in world history. Even if it were politically possible to distribute such astronomical sums, the Protocol does not provide for adequate monitoring and enforcement of these new property rights. Nor does it offer an achievable plan for allocating new permits, which would be essential if the system were expanded to include developing countries.
The collapse of the Kyoto Protocol--which Victor views as inevitable--will provide the political space to rethink strategy. Better alternatives would focus on policies that control emissions, such as emission taxes. Though economically sensible, however, a pure tax approach is impossible to monitor in practice. Thus, the author proposes a hybrid in which governments set targets for both emission quantities and tax levels. This offers the important advantages of both emission trading and taxes without the debilitating drawbacks of each.
Individuals at all levels of environmental science, economics, public policy, and politics-from students to professionals--and anyone else hoping to participate in the debate over how to slow global warming will want to read this book.
eBook
This Contested Land
One woman's enlightening trek through the natural
histories, cultural stories, and present perils of thirteen
national monuments, from Maine to Hawaii
This land is your land . When it comes to national
monuments, the sentiment could hardly be more fraught. Gold Butte
in Nevada, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks in New Mexico, Katahdin
Woods and Waters in Maine, Cascade-Siskiyou in Oregon and
California: these are among the thirteen natural sites McKenzie
Long visits in This Contested Land , an eye-opening
exploration of the stories these national monuments tell, the
passions they stir, and the controversies surrounding them
today.
Starting amid the fragrant sagebrush and red dirt of Bears Ears
National Monument on the eve of the Trump Administration's decision
to reduce the site by 85 percent, Long climbs sandstone cliffs, is
awed by Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings and is intrigued by
4,000-year-old petroglyphs. She hikes through remote pink canyons
recently removed from the boundary of Grand Staircase-Escalante,
skis to a backcountry hut in Maine to view a truly dark night sky,
snorkels in warm Hawaiian waters to plumb the meaning of marine
preserves, volunteers near the most contaminated nuclear site in
the United States, and witnesses firsthand the diverse forms of
devotion evoked by the Rio Grande. In essays both contemplative and
resonant, This Contested Land confronts an unjust past and
imagines a collaborative future that bears witness to these
regions' enduring Indigenous connections.
From hazardous climate change realities to volatile tensions
between economic development and environmental conservation,
practical and philosophical issues arise as Long seeks the
complicated and often overlooked-or suppressed-stories of these
incomparable places. Her journey, mindfully undertaken and movingly
described, emphasizes in clear and urgent terms the unique
significance of, and grave threats to, these contested lands.
eBook
Crossings : how road ecology is shaping the future of our planet
\"An eye-opening account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, from the award-winning author of Eager\"-- Publisher's description.
Book
The Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks
For as long has humans have lived in communities, storytelling has bound people to each other and to their environments. In recent times, scholars have noted how social networks arise around issues of resource and ecological management. In this book, Raul Lejano, Mrill Ingram, and Helen Ingram argue that stories, or narratives, play a key role in these networks -- that environmental communities \"narrate themselves into existence.\" The authors propose the notion of the narrative-network, and introduce innovative tools to analyze the plots, characters, and events that inform environmental action. Their analysis sheds light on how environmental networks can emerge in unlikely contexts and sustain themselves against great odds. The authors present three case studies that demonstrate the power of narrative and narratology in the analysis of environmental networks: a conservation network in the Sonoran Desert, which achieved some success despite U.S.-Mexico border issues; a narrative that bridged differences between community and scientists in the Turtle Islands; and networks of researchers and farmers who collaborated to develop and sustain alternative agriculture practice in the face of government inaction. These cases demonstrate that by paying attention to language and storytelling, we can improve our understanding of environmental behavior and even change it in positive ways.
eBook
Revenant Ecologies
Engaging a broad spectrum of ecological thought to
articulate the ethical scale of global extinction
As global rates of plant and animal extinctions mount, anxieties
about the future of the earth's ecosystems are fueling ever more
ambitious efforts at conservation, which draw on Western scientific
principles to manage species and biodiversity. In Revenant
Ecologies , Audra Mitchell argues that these responses not only
ignore but also magnify powerful forms of structural violence like
colonialism, racism, genocide, extractivism, ableism, and
heteronormativity, ultimately contributing to the destruction of
unique life forms and ecosystems.
Critiquing the Western discourse of global extinction and
biodiversity through the lens of diverse Indigenous philosophies
and other marginalized knowledge systems, Revenant
Ecologies promotes new ways of articulating the ethical
enormity of global extinction. Mitchell offers an ambitious
framework-(bio)plurality-that focuses on nurturing unique,
irreplaceable worlds, relations, and ecosystems, aiming to
transform global ecological-political relations, including through
processes of land return and critically confronting discourses on
\"human extinction.\"
Highlighting the deep violence that underpins ideas of
\"extinction,\" \"conservation,\" and \"biodiversity,\" Revenant
Ecologies fuses political ecology, global ethics, and violence
studies to offer concrete, practical alternatives. It also
foregrounds the ways that multi-life-form worlds are actively
defying the forms of violence that drive extinction-and that shape
global efforts to manage it.
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eBook