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This book, originally published in 1992, describes the Soviet environment at its crisis point in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Beolorussia and the Ukraine had, as a result of the Chernobyl accident, been declared ecological disaster zones and across the country as a whole as many as 20 per cent of the population lived in environmental danger areas and another 35-40 per cent in unsatisfactory conditions. According to a Supreme Soviet Environment Committee report of 1989, 80% of all illness in the USSR related either directly or indirectly to environmental problems. In this book, leading specialists from both the West and the Soviet Union present a comprehensive analysis of these problems. The contributors examine the aftermath of Chernobyl, the catastrophic causes and effects of the Aral Sea's shrinkage, the environmental issues and public unrest. The depth of analysis in this volume together with the breadth of topics addressed will ensure that it is read by students and specialists of the Soviet Union and environmental issues, as well as by all government officials, journalists and industrialists with an interest in the Soviet environment.
The Aral Sea is well known for its devastating regression over the second half of the twentieth century, and for its recent partial restoration. Environment and Post-Soviet Transformation in Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea Region is the first book to explore what these monumental changes have meant to those living on the sea’s shores. Following the fluctuating fortunes of the pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet fisheries, the book shows how the vast environmental changes the region has undergone cannot be disentangled from the transformations of Soviet socialism and postsocialism. This ethnographic perspective prompts a critical rethinking of the category of environmental disaster through which the...
Rural Development in Eurasia and the Middle East: Land Reform, Demographic Change, and Environmental Constraints
There are incentive indications that the growth of human population, the increasing use and abuse of natural resources combined with climate changes (probably due to anthropic pollution, to some extent) exert a considerable stress on closed (or semi-enclosed) seas and lakes. In many regions of the world, marine and lacustrine hydrosystems are (or have been) the object of severe or fatal alterations, from changes in regional hydrological regimes and/or modifications of the quantity or the quality of water resources associated with (natural or man-made) land reclamation, deterioration of geochemical balances (increased salinity, oxygen's depletion .. . ), mutations of ecosystems (eutrophicatio...
'The environmentalist's bible' Times Higher Education Supplement. 'Essential reading' The Good Book Guide. In this 23rd edition of State of the World - long established as the most authoritative and accessible annual guide to our progress towards a sustainable future - the studies pay particular attention to China and India, two of the world's most rapidly developing countries in terms of industry, population and significance to the global economy, and associated impacts on the environment. Published in 27 countries and 22 languages, State of the World draws on the breadth of expertise in the Worldwatch Institute's team of writers and researchers. Each year's edition of State of the World is...
A major history of Central Asia and how it has been shaped by modern world events Central Asia is often seen as a remote and inaccessible land on the peripheries of modern history. Encompassing Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and the Xinjiang province of China, it in fact stands at the crossroads of world events. Adeeb Khalid provides the first comprehensive history of Central Asia from the mid-eighteenth century to today, shedding light on the historical forces that have shaped the region under imperial and Communist rule. Predominantly Muslim with both nomadic and settled populations, the peoples of Central Asia came under Russian and Chinese rule after the 17...
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, new states - most of them muslim - emerged in central Asia and the Caucasus. These new states proved to be both oil-rich and central in the strip of conflict and instability that stretches from central Europe to the Far East. This volume draws attention to previously neglected issues which could result in conflict: * the water problem and negotiation in central Asia * the issues of 'Southern Azerbaijan', Ajaria and Javakheti * the many problems of multi-ethnic Daghestan * two attempts at unity in the Northern Caucasus. The book also re-examines some of the established truths regarding the states around the Caspian Sea, and re-evaluates: * the validity of the term 'Caspian region' and the question of who should be included in this new region * the general belief that the Caspian region will be a geopolitical centre of the 21st century * the axiom that the dissolution of the USSR has reopened the 'Great Game'. Moreover, The Caspian Region thoughtfully re-examines the questions of democracy; of fundamentalist Islam and of the complex, ambivalent relationship between Islam and nationalism in the region.
In this newly revised and expanded edition of the award-winning International Environmental Policy, Lynton Keith Caldwell updates his comprehensive survey of the global international movement for protection of the environment. Serving as a history of international cooperation on environmental issues, this book focuses primarily on the development of international agreements and institutional arrangements--both governmental and nongovernmental--along with the impact of science, technology, trade, and communication on environmental policy. With implications for multinational commerce, population policy, agriculture, energy issues, biological and cultural diversity, transnational equity, ideology, and education, this book takes a broad view of the policy outcomes of what may be the most important social movement of the 20th century, and addresses the events and politics that have significantly affected the movement over the last twenty years and will continue to affect it into the next century.