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By the year 2000, the world had built more than 45,000 large dams to irrigate crops, generate power, control floods in wet times and store water in dry times. Yet, in the last century, large dams also disrupted the ecology of half the world's rivers, displaced tens of millions of people from their homes and left nations burdened with debt. Their impacts have inevitably generated growing controversy and conflicts. Resolving their role in meeting water and energy needs is vital for the future and illustrates the complex development challenges that face our societies. The Report of the World Commission on Dams: - is the product of an unprecedented global public policy effort to bring government...
Originally published in 1999. The theme running through this collection of essays is that food quality and human health, the welfare of animals and the methods of farming, and the quality of the environment, go hand-in-hand. This theme continues along the lines that the present system is harmful to them all and to our ability to generate enough good food for the whole world. The contributors to the volume offer alternatives - for more humane and moderate methods of farming which produce enough nourishing food without damaging the environment it depends on.
Sustainability Principles and Practice gives an accessible and comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of sustainability. The focus is on furnishing solutions and equipping students with both conceptual understanding and technical skills. Each chapter explores one aspect of the field, first introducing concepts and presenting issues, then supplying tools for working toward solutions. Elements of sustainability are examined piece by piece, and coverage ranges over ecosystems, social equity, environmental justice, food, energy, product life cycles, cities, and more. Techniques for management and measurement as well as case studies from around the world are provided. The 3rd editi...
Janice Perlman wrote the first in-depth account of life in the favelas, a book hailed as one of the most important works in global urban studies in the last 30 years. Now, in Favela, Perlman carries that story forward to the present. Re-interviewing many longtime favela residents whom she had first met in 1969--as well as their children and grandchildren--Perlman offers the only long-term perspective available on the favelados as they struggle for a better life. Perlman discovers that while educational levels have risen, democracy has replaced dictatorship, and material conditions have improved, many residents feel more marginalized than ever. The greatest change is the explosion of drug and arms trade and the high incidence of fatal violence that has resulted. Yet the greatest challenge of all is job creation--decent work for decent pay. If unemployment and under-paid employment are not addressed, she argues, all other efforts will fail to resolve the fundamental issues. Foreign Affairs praises Perlman for writing "with compassion, artistry, and intelligence, using stirring personal stories to illustrate larger points substantiated with statistical analysis."
What will it take to protect the global environment? In this book, Ronnie D. Lipschutz argues that neither world government nor green economics can do the job. Governmental regulations often are resisted by those whose behavior they are intended to change, and markets—even green ones—look to profits more than to protection. What will be needed, Lipschutz believes, is not global management but political action through community- and place-based organizations and projects. People acting together locally can have a cumulative impact on environmental quality that is significant, long lasting, and widespread. The comparative case studies of environmental activism in Northern California, Hungary, and Indonesia (the latter written by Judith Mayer) illustrate one of the central premises of this book: that local action is linked increasingly to globe-spanning networks of knowledge and practice, in what Lipschutz calls global civil society. The result is a system of governance that is both local and global, to which states and international organizations are turning increasingly for help and advice.
The interconnectedness of the global environment and finiteness of the earth's natural resources require an increased understanding of environmental and natural-resource policy and politics in countries around the world. This is especially true of industrializing countries where widespread ecological disturbances and rapid exploitation of natural resources are taking place. Ecological Policy and Politics in Developing Countries provides an in-depth study of ecological problems, policies, and politics in ten major industrializing countries. Each chapter discusses the increasingly international context of domestic environmental policies and explores some of the powerful interests and instituti...
'This excellent book delivers an up-to-date reading of the current literature in rural geography. It provides a commentary on the theoretical development of rural studies and is supported by apposite case studies. Rural conveys the excitement, diversity and depth of rural geography to students in a challenging but clear manner, enabling them to engage successfully with the discipline at an advanced level.'-Dr Richard Yarwood, University of Plymouth, UK.
This is the first volume in an ambitious new series-"Patterns of Potential Human Progress"-inspired by the UN Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) and other initiatives to improve the global condition. The first and most fundamental of these goals-reducing poverty worldwide-is the focus of this book. Using the large-scale computer program called International Futures (IFs) developed over three decades at the prestigious University of Denver Graduate School of International Studies, this book explores the most extensive set of forecasts of global poverty ever made-providing a wide range of scenarios based on an authoritative array of data. It transcends the "$1 a day" baseline measure of pover...