front cover of The Earth
The Earth
Natural Resources and Human Intervention
Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek
Haus Publishing, 2009
Population growth mainly occurs in fast-developing, and developing nations. Can earth sustain this growth? How will the power shift? This book offers prospects on causes and effects of population growth and the age-ing population in industrialised countries.
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Environmental Disputes
Community Involvement In Conflict Resolution
James E. Crowfoot and Julia Wondolleck
Island Press, 1990
Environmental Disputes helps citizen groups, businesses, and governments understand how Environmental Dispute Settlement--a set of procedures for settling disputes over environmental policies without litigation--can work for them.

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front cover of Every Citizen a Statesman
Every Citizen a Statesman
The Dream of a Democratic Foreign Policy in the American Century
David Allen
Harvard University Press, 2022

The surprising story of the movement to create a truly democratic foreign policy by engaging ordinary Americans in world affairs.

No major arena of US governance is more elitist than foreign policy. International relations barely surface in election campaigns, and policymakers take little input from Congress. But not all Americans set out to build a cloistered foreign policy “establishment.” For much of the twentieth century, officials, activists, and academics worked to foster an informed public that would embrace participation in foreign policy as a civic duty.

The first comprehensive history of the movement for “citizen education in world affairs,” Every Citizen a Statesman recounts an abandoned effort to create a democratic foreign policy. Taking the lead alongside the State Department were philanthropic institutions like the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and the Foreign Policy Association, a nonprofit founded in 1918. One of the first international relations think tanks, the association backed local World Affairs Councils, which organized popular discussion groups under the slogan “World Affairs Are Your Affairs.” In cities across the country, hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered in homes and libraries to learn and talk about pressing global issues.

But by the 1960s, officials were convinced that strategy in a nuclear world was beyond ordinary people, and foundation support for outreach withered. The local councils increasingly focused on those who were already engaged in political debate and otherwise decried supposed public apathy, becoming a force for the very elitism they set out to combat. The result, David Allen argues, was a chasm between policymakers and the public that has persisted since the Vietnam War, insulating a critical area of decisionmaking from the will of the people.

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Expanding Partnerships in Conservation
Edited by Jeffrey A. McNeely
Island Press, 1995

Protected areas around the globe national parks, wildlife reserves, biosphere reserves will prosper only if they are supported by the public, the private sector, and the full range of government agencies. Yet such support is unlikely unless society appreciates the importance of protected areas to its own interest, and the protected areas are well-managed and contribute to the national welfare in a cost-effective way.

A crucial foundation for success is full cooperation between individuals and institutions. Based on papers presented at the IVth World Congress on National Parks and Protected Areas, Expanding Partnerships in Conservation explores how new and stronger partnerships can be formed between managers of protected areas and other sectors of society. It describes a range of activities currently underway in many parts of the world that are intended to improve conservation efforts at the international, national, and local levels.

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front cover of Exploring 'Unseen' Social Capital in Community Participation
Exploring 'Unseen' Social Capital in Community Participation
Everyday Lives of Poor Mainland Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong
Sam Wong
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
This volume argues that using social capital to eradicate poverty is unlikely to succeed because its mainstream approach mistakenly assumes that social capital necessarily benefits poor people. The inadequacy of that assumption, Sam Wong argues, calls for a reassessment of human motivations, institutional dynamics, and the complexity of structures in social capital building. Proposing a “pro-poor” perspective, in which poverty-specific outcomes are highlighted, he suggests an exploration of “unseen” social capital is in order—not only to challenge the mainstream understanding of “seen” social capital, but to demonstrate the need for everyday cooperation, which is shaped by social norms, influenced by conscious and unconscious motivations, and subject to changes in priority based on livelihood. A useful volume for both policy makers and practitioners, Exploring ‘Unseen’ Social Capital in Community Participation offers a fresh perspective in thinking about civic and social agency.
 
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