You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book presents a broad array of global case studies exploring the interaction between religion and the conservation of nature, from the viewpoints of the religious practitioners themselves. With conservation and religion often being championed as allies in the quest for a sustainable world where humans and nature flourish, this book provides a much-needed compendium of detailed examples where religion and conservation science have been brought together. Case studies cover a variety of religions, faiths and practices, including traditional, Indigenous, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto and Zoroastrianism. Importantly, this volume gives voice to the religious practitioners and adherents themselves. Beyond an exercise in anthropology, ethnobiology and comparative religion, the book is an applied work, seeking the answer to how in a world of nearly eight billion people, we might help our own species to prevent the extinction of life. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of nature conservation, environment and religion, cultural geography and ethnobiology, as well as practitioners and professionals working in conservation.
Explores key issues in biocultural diversity, examining species and sites considered to be sacred and their implications for conservation.
Presenting a thorough examination of the sacred forests of Asia, this volume engages with dynamic new scholarly dialogues on the nature of sacred space, place, landscape, and ecology in the context of the sharply contested ideas of the Anthropocene. Given the vast geographic range of sacred groves in Asia, this volume discusses the diversity of associated cosmologies, ecologies, traditional local resource management practices, and environmental governance systems developed during the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Adopting theoretical perspectives from political ecology, the book views ecology and polity as constitutive elements interacting within local, regional, and glo...
Tribal societies in India observe a diverse set of religious practices which are a quintessential part of their community life. This handbook explores rituals, beliefs, ceremonies and festivals, liturgy, knowledge and traditions that tribal people practice today and traces the history of their interaction with other religions, communities and cultures. The book provides analytical, intellectual, and cultural insights into the religious tradition of tribes within the interactive space of a pan-Indian civilisation. It examines contemporary religious practice within tribes while also exploring changes either brought on by interactions or political interventions. The volume reflects on the inter...
Sacred Natural Sites are the world's oldest protected places. This book focuses on a wide spread of both iconic and lesser known examples such as sacred groves of the Western Ghats (India), Sagarmatha /Chomolongma (Mt Everest, Nepal, Tibet - and China), the Golden Mountains of Altai (Russia), Holy Island of Lindisfarne (UK) and the sacred lakes of the Niger Delta (Nigeria). The book illustrates that sacred natural sites, although often under threat, exist within and outside formally recognised protected areas, heritage sites. Sacred natural sites may well be some of the last strongholds for building resilient networks of connected landscapes. They also form important nodes for maintaining a dynamic socio-cultural fabric in the face of global change. The diverse authors bridge the gap between approaches to the conservation of cultural and biological diversity by taking into account cultural and spiritual values together with the socio-economic interests of the custodian communities and other relevant stakeholders.
This book demonstrates how traditional knowledge can be connected to the modern world. Human knowledge of housing, health and agriculture dates back thousands of years, with old wisdom developing and becoming modern. But in the past few decades, global communities have increasingly become aware that some of this valuable knowledge has fallen by the wayside. This has sparked systematic efforts at the local, national and global levels to connect this neglected knowledge to the modern world. It discusses the origin of the topic, its importance, recent developments in India and abroad, and what is being done and still needs to be done in order to preserve India’s traditional knowledge. The discussions address a broad range of fields and organizations: from Basmati rice to Ayurvedic cosmetics; from traditional irrigation and folk music to modern drug discovery and climate change adaptation; and from the Biodiversity Convention to the WHO, WTO and WIPO.
The book examines concurrent green initiatives and their spillover effects on environmental conservation and management to reveal their impact on conservation effectiveness, drawing on a range of international case studies. Green initiatives are programs, payments, or endeavors that restore, sustain, or improve nature’s capacity, with examples including payments for ecosystem services and the development of nature reserves and protected areas. This book explicitly examines concurrent green initiatives, where initiatives overlap either geographically or in terms of recipients of multiple payments. The book provides a detailed analysis of case studies in the USA and China, including the USA-...
In Ravana's Kingdom, Justin W. Henry delves into the historical literary reception of the Ramayana in Sri Lanka, charting how the demon-king antagonist, Ravana, has become an unlikely cultural hero among Sinhala Buddhists over the past decade.
This volume brings together a collection of case studies examining wildlife ecology and conservation across India. The book explores and examines a wide range of fauna across different terrains and habitats in India, revealing key issues and concerns for biodiversity conservation, with a particular emphasis on the impact of humans and climate change. Case-studies are as wide-ranging as tigers, leopards, sloth bears, pheasants, insects, and birds, across a diverse range of landscapes, including forests, wetlands, and nature reserves, and even a university campus. Split into three parts, Part I focuses on how the distribution of animals is influenced by the availability of resources such as fo...
- presents an engaging and accessible examination of the role of systematic biology in species exploration and biodiversity conservation - clarifies misconceptions about systematic biology, reimagining it for the 21st Century - proposes an ambitious, planetary-scale project to inventory and make known every kind of plant, animal, and microbe on Earth - challenges the next and present generations of taxonomists to allow molecular data to assume it’s proper place alongside traditional data, to reembrace the fundamentally important mission of systematics - will be of great interest to those researching and working in systematics in botany and zoology, as well as professionals working in taxonomy and biodiversity conservation.