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The volume Environmental Change and African Societies contributes to current debates on global climate change from the perspectives of the social sciences and the humanities. It charts past and present environmental change in different African settings and also discusses policies and scenarios for the future. The first section, “Ideas”, enquires into local perceptions of the environment, followed by contributions on historical cases of environmental change and state regulation. The section “Present” addresses decision-making and agenda-setting processes related to current representations and/or predicted effects of climate change. The section “Prospects” is concerned with contemporary African megatrends. The authors move across different scales of investigation, from locally-grounded ethnographic analyses to discussions on continental trends and international policy. Contributors are: Daniel Callo-Concha, Joy Clancy, Manfred Denich, Sara de Wit, Ton Dietz, Irit Eguavoen, Ben Fanstone, Ingo Haltermann, Laura Jeffrey, Emmanuel Kreike, Vimbai Kwashirai, James C. McCann, Bertrand F. Nero, Jonas Ø. Nielsen, Erick G. Tambo, Julia Tischler.
Maria Sala introduced experimental and field-based studies on soil and fluvial processes in Spain during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Research on this broad topic has grown remarkably worldwide since then. This title shows some of these advances and documents the latest research, although with a particularity: it gives special treatment to research on Mediterranean climate regions, an ever-present issue in Maria Sala's research career. It contains the latest research on slope and river processes with a special emphasis on rivers and catchments with a Mediterranean climate. Papers cover a gamut of topics describing research and applied studies, mainly in Spain, but also in Israel, the USA,...
The International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE) was established as a means of raising worldwide public and political awareness of the vast, though frequently under-used, potential the Earth Sciences possess for improving the quality of life of the peoples of the world and safeguarding Earth’s rich and diverse environments. The International Year project was jointly initiated in 2000 by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) and the Earth Science Division of the United Nations Educational, Scienti?c and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). IUGS, which is a Non-Governmental Organisation, and UNESCO, an Inter-Governmental Organisation, already shared a long record of productive cooper...
Global environmental change (GEC) represents an immediate and unprecedented threat to the food security of hundreds of millions of people, especially those who depend on small-scale agriculture for their livelihoods. As this book shows, at the same time, agriculture and related activities also contribute to GEC by, for example, intensifying greenhouse gas emissions and altering the land surface. Responses aimed at adapting to GEC may have negative consequences for food security, just as measures taken to increase food security may exacerbate GEC. The authors show that this complex and dynamic relationship between GEC and food security is also influenced by additional factors; food systems ar...
Over the past decade, interest in gender equality and women’s empowerment has grown rapidly, creating a unique opportunity to institutionalize gender research within agricultural research for development. This book, edited by researchers from the CGIAR Gender Platform, reviews and reflects on the growing body of evidence from gender research. It marks a shift a way from a traditional focus on how gender analysis can contribute to improved productivity, flipping the question to ask, How does agricultural and environmental research and development contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment? Chapters synthesize the wide range of CGIAR and other research in this area, covering breeding research and seed systems, value chain participation, nutrition-sensitive agriculture, natural resources, climate adaptation and mitigation, the “feminization” of agriculture, women’s role in agricultural research, and emerging gender transformative approaches.
Shifting cultivation supports around 200 million people in the Asia-Pacific region alone. It is often regarded as a primitive and inefficient form of agriculture that destroys forests, causes soil erosion and robs lowland areas of water. These misconceptions and their policy implications need to be challenged. Swidden farming could support carbon sequestration and conservation of land, biodiversity and cultural heritage. This comprehensive analysis of past and present policy highlights successes and failures and emphasizes the importance of getting it right for the future. This book is enhanced with supplementary resources. The addendum chapters can be found at: www.cabi.org/openresources/91797
Carbon Inventory Methods Handbook fills the need for a handbook that provides guidelines and methods required for carbon inventory. It provides detailed step-by-step information on sampling procedures, field and laboratory measurements, application of remote sensing and GIS techniques, modeling, and calculation procedures along with sources of data for carbon inventory. The book is driven by a growing need for ‘carbon inventory’ for land use sections such as forests.
This manual is intended to help rural advisory and agricultural extension workers guide farming communities in the establishment of agroforestry practices in rice-production landscapes in Southeast Asia. It sets out the steps to be taken to successfully integrate trees in rice-fields and associated farms and landscapes and presents practical tools that can be used by extensionists when supporting farmers who are implementing agroforestry practices on their farms. The ultimate aim of this guide is to support farmers in increasing the overall productivity of their farms while increasing resilience to climate change, improving the health of the surrounding environment, and enhancing the livelihoods of their communities.
Now as we stand at the crossroads, the steps taken by national governments, business communities and others involved in the negotiations will determine which path we will take as a world community, to mitigate and to adapt to climate change. As discussed in the book, in the coming years it is more politics than policies that will determine the way