Book Description
Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency.
"Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change, and seeks to understand the qualities of a system that must be maintained or enhanced in order to achieve sustainability. It explains why greater efficiency by itself cannot solve resource problems and offers a constructive alternative that opens up options rather than closing them down.
In Resilience Thinking, scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt present an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience. The book arose out of appeals from colleagues in science and industry for a plainly written account of what resilience is all about and how a resilience approach differs from current practices. Rather than complicated theory, the book offers a conceptual overview along with five case studies of resilience thinking in the real world. It is an engaging and important work for anyone interested in managing risk in a complex world.
Customer Reviews:
A Pathway to Our New Future.......2007-07-04
A MUST read for environmentalists. And for business, community and anyone willing to adapt the thinking to their situation. Brian and David have done a superb job in translating resilience theory and its close ties to complex adaptive systems. I have been looking for a book to recommend to my clients and students and this is it. I would also strongly recommend that the 'old guard' sustainability brigade have a look at this. The strategies that sustainability largely pursues are unsustainable. Resilience thinking is a more accurate path for us to head toward something that resembles sustainability. Well done.
Well written explanation of complexity in ecosystems.......2007-07-02
This is a great book. I've read several books on this topic, and so far, they have all had a similar issue: They are written by people who are scientists first, writers second. This book has two authors. One is a scientist and the other is a science writer. This made for a well put-together, understandable explanation of complex adaptive systems, which are what ecosystems are currently understood to be.
The authors have done a few things to make the book great. First, they have broken the topic down into a set of subtopics, with one chapter explaining each subtopic. At the end of each chapter is a summary of important points so it's clear what the authors are hoping you get out of the chapter. Each chapter is then followed by a case study that is used to illustrate the ideas just covered.
If you are looking for an introductory book on ecosystems and how humans affect their ability to maintain themselves, this is the book to read. The authors also provide several good resources at the end of the book if you would like to expand your knowledge further.
Book Description
Ecosystems are the productive engines of the planet, providing us with everything from the water we drink to the food we eat and the fiber we use for clothing, paper, and lumber. Yet nearly every measure used to assess the health of ecosystems indicates that we are drawing on them more than ever, while degrading them at an accelerating rate.
How then can we best manage our vital ecosystems-and reduce our own impacts-so that they remain healthy and productive in the face of increasing human demands? Governments and businesses will first have to rethink some basic assumptions about how we measure and plan economic growth, taking into account the natural limits that sustain our ecosystems. This volume brings together the critical information about the condition and long-term prospects of our ecosystems that will be needed to make responsible decisions about their future.
Focusing on five critical systems (croplands, forests, coastal zones, freshwater systems, and grasslands) the book analyzes the value of goods and services currently provided by our ecosystems and their capacity to continue production. It goes on to recommend sweeping changes for managing these biological underpinnings of the global economy and human well-being, including: respecting the natural boundaries of ecosystems and managing them as one complete system, rather that as separate entities; regularly assessing the condition of our ecosystems and studying the processes that underlie their capacity to sustain life; assembling information that allows a careful weighing of tradeoffs between ecosystem goods and services and environmental, political, social, and economic goals; and including the public-particularly local communities-in the management of ecosystems.
A joint publication of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme, World Bank, and World Resources Institute
Customer Reviews:
Information and Data Supporting Environmental Issues.......2002-11-01
This is the Millennium Edition (9th) in a series, which is a biennial (every-other year), comprehensive review of the critical issues and challenges facing the world's environmental leaders. The work is compiled by the researchers and staff of the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank, and the World Resources Institute. World Resources provides surveys of current conditions and historical trends in major areas of concern and resource areas. The 2000-2001 edition of World Resources addresses the issues and concerns confronting the Earth's ecosytems. Individual chapters address the study of specific ecosystem types (e.g., agricultural coastal, forest, freshwater, grasslands)and analyzes the problems inherent in each. These analyses are described in the context of the ecosystem approach from identification of concerns to their resolution. Supporting trends data are provided for a variety of critical issues: Biodiversity and Protected Areas; Forests and Grasslands; Coastal, Marine, and Inland Waters; Agriculture and Food; Freshwater; Atmosphere and Climate; Energy and Resource Use; Population and Human Development; Basic Economic Indicators; and Small Nations and Islands. This work is an essential resource for understanding the scientific and technical basis of the major environmental and natural resources issues with which we deal at local, regional, national, and global levels. Sections are clearly written for an understanding by non-scientists and scholars reading this outside of their discipline of expertise. Extensive footnotes, maps, charts, and data tables are provided. Data also available in CD-ROM formats. This is an essential environmental reference work. Because of its thoroughness, ease of use, comprehensive coverage, and cost, this book should be on the shelf of ALL acacdemic, public, school (grade 6 and above), government agency, corporate, and other special libraries. Researchers (engineering, life, physical, policy, and social sciences), decision makers, educators, and students will find this a truly impressive ready-reference source for their own bookshelves as well.
Book Description
While many disciplines contribute to environmental conservation, there is little successful integration of science and social values. Arguing that the central problem in conservation is a lack of effective communication, Bryan Norton shows in Sustainability how current linguistic resources discourage any shared, multidisciplinary public deliberation over environmental goals and policy. In response, Norton develops a new, interdisciplinary approach to defining sustainability—the cornerstone of environmental policy—using philosophical and linguistic analyses to create a nonideological vocabulary that can accommodate scientific and evaluative environmental discourse.
Emphasizing cooperation and adaptation through social learning, Norton provides a practical framework that encourages an experimental approach to language clarification and problem formulation, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to creating solutions. By moving beyond the scientific arena to acknowledge the importance of public discourse, Sustainability offers an entirely novel approach to environmentalism.
Book Description
In recent years, scientists have begun to focus on the idea that healthy, functioning ecosystems provide essential services to human populations, ranging from water purification to food and medicine to climate regulation. Lacking a healthy environment, these services would have to be provided through mechanical means, at a tremendous economic and social cost.
Nature and the Marketplace examines the controversial proposition that markets should be designed to capture the value of those services. Written by an economist with a background in business, it evaluates the real prospects for various of nature's marketable services to "turn profits" at levels that exceed the profits expected from alternative, ecologically destructive, business activities. The author:
- describes the infrastructure that natural systems provide, how we depend on it, and how we are affecting it
- explains the market mechanism and how it can lead to more efficient resource use
- looks at key economic activities-such as ecotourism, bioprospecting, and carbon sequestration-where market forces can provide incentives for conservation
- examines policy options other than the market, such as pollution credits and mitigation banking
- considers the issue of sustainability and equity between generations
.
Nature and the Marketplace presents an accessible introduction to the concept of ecosystem services and the economics of the environment. It offers a clear assessment of how market approaches can be used to protect the environment, and illustrates that with a number of cases in which the value of ecosystems has actually been captured by markets.
The book offers a straightforward business economic analysis of conservation issues, eschewing romantic notions about ecosystem preservation in favor of real-world economic solutions. It will be an eye-opening work for professionals, students, and scholars in conservation biology, ecology, environmental economics, environmental policy, and related fields.
Customer Reviews:
trading pollution permits.......2006-06-28
Heal explains how one might put a value on an ecosystem, or parts thereof. It's a relatively recent approach that attempts to avoid a tragedy of the commons with respect to the environment, be it local or even global.
A very useful idea described is the trading of pollution permits. The latter are rights to pollute. The premise is that instead of a government trying to mandate a minimum pollution level, it lets a free market determine this, by giving monetary value to permits. So that a company has incentive to develop or use innovative ways to minimise its pollution. Hence being able to sell any net gains to others. This also avoids the government trying to set a value on a permit.
The book suggests that carbon permits might be crucial in battling global warming.
Average customer rating:
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Governance as a Trialogue: Government-Society-Science in Transition (Water Resources Development and Management)
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 3540462651 |
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The Global Water Partnership notes that the crisis in the water sector is a crisis of governance. The same is true for environmental management. Water management is an integral part of ecosystem governance and is closely linked to the sustainable development discourse. This book unpacks the core elements of governance, with a specific focus on water and analyses the linkages between key variables in an effort to increase our understanding of what makes governance good. It is a necessary read for any environmental/water resource professional tasked with the responsibility of implementing Integrated Environmental and Water Resource Management and Sustainable Development.
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Book Description
Ever since the United Nations Earth Summit, more than a decade ago, people have become increasingly aware of the principles of sustainability, and this is helping to change the way that they think and act. However, many environmental conditions are getting worse. It is clear that we need to take collective action, and that everybody must be involved.
Yet many environmental problems are complex. For example, climate change is connected to issues such as biodiversity, land degradation, and agricultural production. It therefore requires the coordination of many different stakeholders, and the application of diverse knowledge and skills.
The constant evolution of global environmental problems also requires society to be willing to experiment with new and innovative approaches. Many local communities are aware of these issues, but they are struggling to determine how they can successfully implement sustainability at a local level, and in practical terms.
The Global Environment Information Centre at United Nations University recognized the importance for communities to adopt innovative methods. We found that this would improve environmental conditions and empower these communities.
In order to understand how innovation can be applied to environmental management at the community level, and promoted in easy-to-use forms, we drew together a team of experts, academics, and community leaders to examine community innovation and its role in promoting sustainability.
The result of our work is the book "Innovative Communities". It provides a concise overview of how innovation and change have a critical role in promoting sustainability. The book has examples from countries in the Asia Pacific region where communities are using innovative methods to address complex and unpredictable environmental problems. This often means introducing new cultures, institutions and governance structures, as well as dramatic changes in people's perceptions, attitudes, roles and behaviors.
The book illustrates various challenges faced by communities in bringing about innovation. It does this by analyzing examples of innovation and community-based environmental initiatives, such as the management of natural resources, forests, solid waste and water, as well as ecotourism. The book demonstrates that, for communities to successfully adopt new approaches in promoting sustainability, it is important to foster people's innovativeness and creativity. The book also identifies factors that help communities implement these initiatives successfully, such as using local culture and knowledge, indigenous systems, strong leadership, and effective mechanisms to ensure strong partnerships and participation.
We hope that this book will help other communities to improve environmental sustainability, and that this will not only improve their circumstances but also contribute to environmental affairs regionally and globally.
Book Description
While scientists usually examine either ecological systems or social systems, the need exists for an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of environmental management and sustainable development. Developed under the auspices of the Beijer Institute in Stockholm, this volume analyzes social and ecological linkages in selected ecosystems using an international and interdisciplinary case study approach. The chapters provide detailed information on a variety of management practices for dealing with environmental change. Taken as a whole, the book contributes to the greater understanding of essential social responses to changes in ecosystems. A key feature is a set of new, or rediscovered, principles for sustainable ecosystem management.
Customer Reviews:
Linking Social and Ecological Systems .......2005-10-25
Excellent book, very well written and researched. Well worth having on the book shelf!
Average customer rating:
- Not a disservice to the cause...but close
- An outstanding contribution to conservation studies.
- Hotspots
- Review of Hotspots....
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Hotspots: Earth's Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions
Russell A. Mittermeier ,
Norman Myers , and
Cristina Goettsch Mittermeier
Manufacturer: Conservation International
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Wilderness: Earth's Last Wild Places
ASIN: 9686397582 |
Amazon.com
A fraction of the earth's surface--1.4 percent--is home to 60 percent of the world's living species. Conservation International has identified these "hotspots" as needing immediate protection in the effort to safeguard the planet's biodiversity. More than just reservoirs of abundant plant and animal life, however, the hotspots are at-risk areas already significantly degraded by humankind. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, these exceedingly important natural areas could be but a memory. But, according to author-biologist Russell Mittermeier, a relatively small amount of capital could help protect a combined area the size of Alaska and have a dramatic effect in conserving biodiversity. Some of these hotspots include the tropical Andes, Central American forests, Southeast Asia and the Philippines, the Cape region of South Africa, and the Mediterranean basin.
As a book, Hotspots is a weighty glimpse at a world in jeopardy. The color photography by the likes of Art Wolfe and others is first-rate--and literally eye opening: a surreal aerial photo of the Betsiboka River in Madagascar, for instance, shows massive erosion that is visible even from outer space. Each of 25 hotspot regions around the world is accompanied by text, scientific charts, maps, and lots of photos depicting both the destruction and the wonders of the natural world.
Book Description
Polynesia, the mountains of south-central China, the coastal forest of Tanzania, New Zealand--all are breathtakingly beautiful sites with a crucial fact in common. They are four of the Earth's twenty-five "hotspots," geographical areas which, according to scientists and naturalists, are home to the world's greatest plant and animal diversity. The numbers are staggering: fully sixty percent of all terrestrial animal and plant species are found in these hotspots, which are themselves only 1.4 percent of the Earth's surface; they contain 54 percent of amphibian species and nearly half of all the plant species on Earth. They are the richest and most threatened reservoirs of plant and animal life on Earth.
Hotspots is the definitive compilation and status report on these twenty-five areas. Russell Mittermeier, Cristine Mittermeier and Norman Myers, who pioneered the "hotspots" concept, take you through each of these regions, describing the various ecosystems and the threats to their existence. They have gathered the work of more than one hundred international experts on plant and animal life together with hundreds of spectacular color photographs, essentially creating a tour of the magnificent array of life found in each region.
How we address and reverse the tide of destruction in coming decades will determine the planet's course for centuries to come, and Hotspots actually offers hope that this destruction can be slowed. By showcasing the specific areas that contain the greatest diversity, it demonstrates that we can conserve a major share of this terrestrial biodiversity by focusing efforts on relatively small geographical areas. Hotspots is not only an important work for conservationists; it is also an extraordinary view of life on Earth.
"Hotspots represents a breakthrough in the way we regard life on Earth and should be required reading for government decision-makers, corporate leaders, and college students alike."--From the Foreword by Harrison Ford
Customer Reviews:
Not a disservice to the cause...but close.......2000-07-11
Yes, many of the photographs are spectacular. But the beautifully reproduced pictures aside, HOTSPOTS is an excellent example of how not to produce a tome designed to further the cause of conservation and ecological awareness. The bigger the book of this type (and HOTSPOTS is a very big book indeed), the more important variation in layout becomes, so that the eye will not become bored. In HOTSPOTS, full-page photographs alternate relentlessly with double-page spreads of interminably dry text better suited to an article in Nature or Scientific American than a coffee-table book intended for the general public. Even the Bulletin of the OTS (Organization for Tropical Studies) is livelier. Herein, endless lists and quoted statistics are interrupted only by the occasional attempt to actually interest the general reader in what is being said. The most accessible prose in the book is the foreword by Harrison Ford, and the publishers don't even have enough sense to put his name on the cover, where it might help to sell a few copies. Do I detect thereby a whiff of scientific snobbery? Attempting to plow through the unbearably monotonous text that only succeeds in rendering fascinating and vitally important information dull as dishwater, one has the impression of a group of scientists dedicated not to furthering the cause of conservation so much as effusively stating their own priorities. Only a few of the included maps are rendered with an eye (pun intended) toward enlightening the reader. In many, color separations are insufficiently boldly conceived and rendered, with the result that their interpretation becomes muddled. The book contains no explicatory drawings, diagrams, or other art work. These would not only serve to make the points lost in the text understandable, but would make the book far more pleasing to look at. Some of the most interesting photographs are set in the margins of the plodding text...and reproduced there so minutely as to render them virtually unviewable. Except for a few pages at the end of each section, there is no middle ground...photos are either full or double-page spread, or absurdly (for a book this size) tiny. More photographs, of varying size, should have been used in place of the monumentally dull text. The entire project cries out for the hand of a good designer. People will buy HOTSPOTS for the photographs or not at all because the text is, for the general public, virtually unreadable. What a shame and a disappointment. As an example of what might have been, I recommend THE LAST RAINFORESTS (Oxford; ed. Collins), MANU (Francis Patthey; MacQuarrie) and one of the most informative and best laid out of this type of volume, JUNGLES (Crown; Ayensu). Next time, they should let Harrison Ford write the whole book.
An outstanding contribution to conservation studies........2000-06-04
Hotspots is rich presentation which provides an extensive survey of the most biologically diverse and endangered ecoregions on the planet, compiling the studies and perceptions of a range of scientists and conservationists to provide a strategy for coping with conservation challenges to each of these regions. 25 areas receive focus from the Andes to Africa and the Philippines. Extensive illustrations compliments in-depth, detailed articles. Very highly recommended: a special presentation.
Hotspots.......2000-04-17
This is a great book. My Aunt Avecita Chicchon helped in makeing this book, so I learned a bit more about it. This book has helped me understand a little bit more about the rain forests of the world, and appreciate the work my aunt and uncle are doing for South America.
Review of Hotspots...........2000-04-02
Looking for a GREAT coffe table book. From front cover to back "Hotspots" contains some of the most compelling natural history photographs that I have ever seen. It is a wonderful mix of scientific information and "wake-up call" to the fragility of our planet. It is the photographs that will captivate you, exquisitly printed in large format this is a must have book for eco-minded readers.
Book Description
Both realism and justice demand that efforts to conserve biological diversity address human needs as well. The most promising hope of accomplishing such a goal lies in locally based conservation efforts - an approach that seeks ways to make local communities the beneficiaries and custodians of conservation efforts.
Natural Connections focuses on rural societies and the conservation of biodiversity in rural areas. It represents the first systematic analysis of locally based efforts, and includes a comprehensive examination of cases from around the world where the community-based approach is used. The book provides:
- an overview of community-based conservation in the context of the debate over sustainable development, poverty, and environmental decline
- case studies from the developed and developing worlds - Indonesia, Peru, Australia, Zimbabwe, Costa Rica, the United Kingdom - that present detailed examples of the locally-based approach to conservation
- a review of the principal issues arising from community-based programs
- an agenda for future action
Customer Reviews:
Must read!!.......2001-03-28
This book is the most complete and intelligent essay I have seen for the past 10 years of work with wildlife conservation and management. Should I have read before, it would have given me more insight in my career. This book is the result of an enormous work load done by scientists, politicians and anthropologists very well compiled in 400 pages.
Books:
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- Science in Seconds for Kids: Over 100 Experiments You Can Do in Ten Minutes or Less
- Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas
- Spatial Information and the Environment (Innovations in Gis, 8)
- Stable Isotope Ecology
- Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956
- The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief
- The Geometry of Physics: An Introduction, Second Edition
- The Great Lakes Water Wars
- The Magic School Bus Inside The Earth (Magic School Bus)
Books Index
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