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This Element addresses a range of pressing challenges and crises by introducing readers to the Maya struggle for land and self-determination in Belize, a former British colony situated in the Caribbean and Central America. In addition to foregrounding environmental relations, the text provides deeper understandings of Qʼeqchiʼ and Mopan Maya people's dynamic conceptions and collective defence of community and territory. To do so, the authors centre the voices, worldviews, and experiences of Maya leaders, youth, and organisers who are engaged in frontline resistance and mobilisations against institutionalised racism and contemporary forms of dispossession. Broadly, the content offers an example of how Indigenous communities are reckoning with the legacies of empire whilst confronting the structural violence and threats to land and life posed by the driving forces of capital accumulation, neoliberal development, and coloniality of the state. Ultimately, this Element illustrates the realities, repercussions, and transformative potential of grassroots movement-building 'from below.' This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Tackling climate change requires long-term commitment to action, yet an array of influential parties with vested interests stand opposed to this. How best to engage and balance these positions for positive change is of increasing concern for advocates and policy makers. Exploring a discord within climate change policy and politics, this insightful volume critically examines the competing assumptions and arguments underpinning political 'stability' versus 're/politicization' as a means of securing effective, long-term climate action. A range of cases exemplify the different political systems and power structures that underpin this antagonism, spanning geographical approaches, examples of non-governmental action, and key industries in the global economy. Authored by an international team of scholars, this book will be of interest to researchers of local, national, and international legislation, specialists on climate governance policy, and other scholars involved in climate action. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Draws from an extensive literature review on food politics to propose a Framework of Holistic Politics for Food System Transformation. The Framework posits that food systems transformation would be a process/outcome of interrelated political configurations of actions across four processes or stages: 1) Identifying resistance to change in the current regime, 2) Creating and sustaining new momentum, 3) Converting new momentum into sustainable options; -and cross-cutting, 4) Managing trade-offs, reducing incoherence, and prioritization. At each stage, four domains of politics must be considered, including 1) Power, the political economy of actors, knowledge, and evidence; 2) Cultural dynamics, norms, and behavior; 3) Capacity and financial resources; and 4) Technological innovations). To deliver normative transformation, these actions must be carried out in four distinct processes. The Framework underscores the need for normative and goal-oriented processes, the multi-dimensionality of politics, and the normative driving environment in governance food systems transformation.
Written for undergraduate students with little or no exposure to economics, this introductory textbook offers a new perspective on environmental economics for the 21st century. It explains how economics for a sustainable world requires a new approach: accepting that the economy is intrinsically dependent on nature. Drawing on up-to-date case studies from around the globe, the book examines how economic concepts and techniques can apply to a wide range of environmental challenges while ensuring that poor and vulnerable members of society are included in progress toward sustainable development. The book also addresses current environmental policy options and innovations at the local, regional, and international levels. Chapters cover key topics such as climate change, pollution, energy, minerals, forests, land use, oceans, biodiversity, and water scarcity. Included in the book are the following pedagogical features: learning objectives, boxed examples, discussion questions, lists of further resources, and a glossary.
The current shift to renewable energy is dominated by globalised energy companies building large-scale wind and solar plants. This book discusses the consequences and possibilities of this shift in India, Germany, and Australia, focusing on regions which have now largely decarbonised electricity generation. The authors show how centralised models of energy provision are maintained, and chart their impacts in terms of energy geography, social stratification, and socio-ecological appropriation. The chapters emphasise the prominent role played by state regulation, financial incentives, and public infrastructure for corporate renewables, arguing that public provision should be re-purposed for distributed renewables, social equity in affected regions, and for wider social benefit. This interdisciplinary book provides fertile building ground for research in - and application of - future energy transitions. It will appeal to students, researchers, and policy makers from anthropology, sociology, politics and political economy, geography, and environmental and sustainability studies.
An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Wildlife Corridors charts some best practices and makes some new theoretical contributions related to the design and creation of wildlife corridors in Anthropocene times. The book not only provides much of the knowledge necessary for a general and credible understanding of connectivity projects, but also makes a unique theoretical contribution to current knowledge about wildlife corridors by arguing that theories about compassion, empathy, and traditional ecological knowledge should inform wildlife corridor projects.
Wildlife corridors, or connectivity projects, are necessary, because when land is set aside or used for human activities, habitats that were once contiguous become fragmented. If species are unable to move between these fragmented areas, they become at risk for inbreeding or extinction. Wildlife corridors attempt to remediate such fragmentation by restoring connectivity and creating expanses of habitat that can provide species with important bridges and points of connection between other habitats. Providing such linkages between habitats reduces these risks and helps maintain genetic diversity and a population's health.
The book argues for a holistic approach to wildlife corridors that attempts to account for a broad and varied range of stakeholder voices, including those of the vulnerable nonhuman species that underpin the need for corridor projects in the first place. This book should appeal to general audiences and practitioners alike.
This third volume of the award-winning The International Atlas of Mars Exploration picks up the story where Volume 2 left off, after the first Martian year of Curiosity's mission in 2014. Covering the exploration of Mars from 2015 to 2021 and supported by a unique set of detailed annotated maps and graphics, this volume documents the activities of Opportunity, Curiosity, InSight, China's rover Zhurong, and the early activities of Mars 2020. This essential visual reference chronicles the day-to-day operations of each mission, recording future landing site planning, how landing sites were chosen and what happened during each mission. Like the previous volumes, the atlas is accessible to space enthusiasts, but the bibliography and meticulous detail make it a particularly valuable resource for academic researchers and students working in planetary science and planetary mapping.
Climate impacts and risk, within and across cities, are distributed highly unequally. Cities located in low latitudes are more vulnerable to climate risk and impacts than in high latitudes, due to the large proportion of informal settlements relative to the housing stock and more frequent extremes. According to EM-DAT, about 60% of environmental disasters in cities relate to riverine floods. Riverine floods and heatwaves cause about 33% of deaths in cities. However, cold-waves and droughts impact most people in cities (42% and 39% of all people, respectively). Human vulnerability intersects with hazardous, underserved communities. Frequently affected groups include women, single parents, and low-income elderly. Responses to climatic events are conditioned by the informality of social fabric and institutions, and by inequitable distribution of impacts, decision-making, and outcomes. To ensure climate-resilient development, adaptation and mitigation actions must include the broader urban context of informality and equity and justice principles. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Balancing theoretical and practice-oriented elements, this book introduces researchers, teachers, and students in international sustainable development law to the IFIs' safeguard policies. It also scrutinizes the case law of independent accountability mechanisms that interpret those policies and afford recourse to individuals and communities adversely affected by development projects. The book's focus on the procedural and substantive features of IFIs' safeguard systems contributes to a more concrete understanding of these organizations' participation in the international lawmaking process on sustainable development. It puts IFIs in the spotlight and provides an international legal critique of their activities to match their notoriety in popular consciousness and to enhance their accountability to those they harm. By approaching international (economic) law and sustainable development through the lens of economic, environmental, and social issues arising in development projects primarily in the Global South, the book presents a needed counterbalance to existing literature on the topic.
In many areas experiencing severe impacts from climate change, it is not the state, but rather rebel groups who wield authority over populations. Rebels are often engaged in responding and adapting to the risks and impacts of climate change as part of their local governance efforts; however, a systematic consideration of the activities and implications has been lacking. This Element looks at a set of behaviors we call “rebel environmental governance” (REG+). This refers to rebel actions aimed at protecting or managing the natural environment to affect civilian welfare amidst increasing pressures of climate change. A framework is advanced for understanding why rebels engage in environmental governance and the implications for security and climate governance. The Element brings rebel organizations into the conversation on climate change, highlighting their role in areas where state power is contested, weak, or absent. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The global illegal wildlife trade is estimated by Interpol to be worth $20 billion annually. A combination of poverty and rich-world demand is driving several thousand species towards extinction and the conservation sector has struggled to respond. Killing the Trade shows that with a shift in strategy, that dire situation can be turned on its head. By bringing together lessons from conservation successes and failures and incorporating insights from the commercial sector, the book sets out a workable holistic strategy to address the underlying causes of the illicit trade. Built around the guiding principle - if it pays it stays - the book provides policymakers, NGOs and other stakeholders with an action plan to help bring the multi-billion-dollar trade to an end.
With over 2,500 climate-related cases filed worldwide, climate litigation is rapidly evolving but lacks a comprehensive resource for guiding judicial approaches. The Cambridge Handbook on Climate Litigation fills this void, offering an authoritative guide to climate litigation's complex landscape. Judges, lawyers and scholars will find insights into how courts globally have addressed recurring issues, from causation to human rights impacts. Building on the rich transnational judicial dialogue already occurring within climate litigation, the Handbook distills emerging best practices with an eye towards the progressive development of the field. Its unique focus on replicable strategies in case law makes it a strategic resource for shaping the future of climate litigation. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
This Element tells the twenty-year socio-legal story of human rights-based climate change litigation. Based on an original database of the totality of rights-based climate change (RCC) lawsuits around the world as well as interviews with leading actors and participant observation in the field, the Element explains the rise and global diffusion of RCC litigation. It combines insights from global governance, international law, climate policy, human rights, and legal mobilization theory in order to offer a socio-legal account of the actors, strategies, and norms that have emerged at the intersection of human rights and climate governance. By proposing a broad understanding of the impacts of legal mobilization that includes direct and indirect, material and symbolic effects, it documents the contributions and shortcomings of human rights litigation in addressing the climate emergency. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
The Atlas of Minerals and Igneous and Metamorphic Rocks in Thin-Section provides the geology student and geoscientist with a stunning new color atlas of the main rock-forming minerals and igneous and metamorphic rocks in thin-section. It showcases minerals in various settings and degrees of alteration and preservation to allow users to best identify their own specimens in practice. Chapter 1 highlights the distinctive characteristics used to identify different minerals. Building on this base, following chapters describe rock textures and types, summarizing their petrogenesis within a plate tectonic framework. This book also includes insights into how additional information from petrographic thin-sections can be obtained using modern analytical methods to increase our understanding of geological processes. The Atlas is an indispensable reference textbook for all facilities that use a petrographic microscope, for professional geoscientists, and as an aid for any student studying minerals and rocks.
Providing a new approach to Earth history, this engaging undergraduate textbook highlights key episodes in the history of our planet and uses them to explain the most important concepts in geology. Rather than presenting exhaustive descriptions of each period of geological time, this conceptual approach shows how geologists use multiple strands of evidence to build up an understanding of the geological past, focusing on exciting events like the extinction of the dinosaurs and the formation of the Grand Canyon and the Himalaya. Beginning with an introduction to geology, tectonics, and the origin of the Universe, subsequent chapters chronicle defining moments in Earth history in an accessible narrative style. Each chapter draws on a variety of sub-disciplines, including stratigraphy, paleontology, petrology, geochemistry, and geophysics, to provide students who have little or no previous knowledge of geology with a broad understanding of our planet and its fascinating history.
As climate change intensifies, conflict-prone tropical regions face heightened vulnerabilities, yet little is known about how climate adaptation and food security efforts affect conflict dynamics. Using South Sudan – a country highly susceptible to climate stress and conflict – as a test case, this Element analyzes how international nongovernmental organizations' (INGO) climate adaptation interventions influence civil war and local social conflicts. It develops a theoretical framework linking climate adaptation to conflict, positing both positive and negative externalities. Drawing on original high-resolution data on INGO-driven adaptation and food security efforts, alongside climate, conflict, and development data, findings are substantiated with interviews from policy workers in South Sudan. The results indicate that while adaptation generally does not reduce conflict, interventions that promote preparedness and are implemented during periods of high climate stress can mitigate social conflicts between militias, pastoralists, and farmers. These insights provide guidance for designing climate adaptation strategies that reduce conflict risks.
How to Decarbonize explores opportunities for decarbonization introduced by recent federal legislation, which has prompted state-level climate planning. It is designed for students and professionals whose work brings them into contact with these opportunities, even if climate is not their primary profession, including city managers, bankers, and home builders who are interested in participating in planning for decarbonization. Chapters aim to support the successful uptake of these policies by providing high-level views of these new decarbonization policies using social theory. The book is divided into four sections, each introducing a social theory about the organization of societies and how they change, and then providing examples to demonstrate the intricacies of implementation.
This edited work provides the first comprehensive account of how connectivity concepts and methods are applied in geomorphology. Addressing both qualitative and quantitative aspects, this volume demonstrates how the powerful conceptual framework of connectivity can be used to effectively describe material transfer between geomorphic system components. The book begins by introducing the key elements of connectivity science, drawing from a broad range of disciplines. The latest research on connectivity is then presented for each major process domain, including hillslopes, rivers and glaciers. Methods of quantification and measurement are described, providing an overview of methodologies and indices that can be used to assess connectivity as a property of soils and landscapes, and approaches for modelling connectivity are reviewed. The book concludes with an examination of applications of connectivity thinking in environmental management. Accessible and self-contained, this text is a key resource for practitioners, researchers and graduate students in geomorphology.
This book provides insight into the impact of climate change on human mobility - including both migration and displacement - by synthesizing key concepts, research, methodology, policy, and emerging issues surrounding the topic. It illuminates the connections between climate change and its implications for voluntary migration, involuntary displacement, and immobility by providing examples from around the world. The chapters use the latest findings from the natural and social sciences to identify key interactions shaping current climate-related migration, displacement, and immobility; predict future changes in those patterns and methods used to model them; summarize key policy and governance instruments available to us to manage the movements of people in a changing climate; and offer directions for future research and opportunities. This book will be valuable for students, researchers, and policy makers of geography, environmental science, climate and sustainability studies, demography, sociology, public policy, and political science.
Covering both theory and experiment, this text describes the behaviour of homogeneous and density-stratified fluids over and around topography. Its presentation is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in fluid mechanics, as well as for practising scientists, engineers, and researchers. Using laboratory experiments and illustrations to further understanding, the author explores topics ranging from the classical hydraulics of single-layer flow to more complex situations involving stratified flows over two- and three-dimensional topography, including complex terrain. A particular focus is placed on applications to the atmosphere and ocean, including discussions of downslope windstorms, and of oceanic flow over continental shelves and slopes. This new edition has been restructured to make it more digestible, and updated to cover significant developments in areas such as exchange flows, gravity currents, waves in stratified fluids, stability, and applications to the atmosphere and ocean.