A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY83 start with W start with W
Despite declining stocks worldwide and increasing health risks, artisanal whaling remains a cultural practice tied to nature’s rhythms. The Wake of the Whale presents the art, history, and challenge of whaling in the Caribbean and North Atlantic, based on a decade of award-winning fieldwork.
Sightings of pilot whales in the frigid Nordic waters have drawn residents of the Faroe Islands to their boats and beaches for nearly a thousand years. Down in the tropics, around the islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, artisanal whaling is a younger trade, shaped by the legacies of slavery and colonialism but no less important to the local population. Each culture, Russell Fielding shows, has developed a distinct approach to whaling that preserves key traditions while adapting to threats of scarcity, the requirements of regulation, and a growing awareness of the humane treatment of animals.
Yet these strategies struggle to account for the risks of regularly eating meat contaminated with methylmercury and other environmental pollutants introduced from abroad. Fielding considers how these and other factors may change whaling cultures forever, perhaps even bringing an end to this way of life.
A rare mix of scientific and social insight, The Wake of the Whale raises compelling questions about the place of cultural traditions in the contemporary world and the sacrifices we must make for sustainability.
Publication of this book was supported, in part, by a grant from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.
In Walden Warming, Richard B. Primack uses Thoreau and Walden, icons of the conservation movement, to track the effects of a warming climate on Concord’s plants and animals. Under the attentive eyes of Primack, the notes that Thoreau made years ago are transformed from charming observations into scientific data sets. Primack finds that many wildflower species that Thoreau observed—including familiar groups such as irises, asters, and lilies—have declined in abundance or have disappeared from Concord. Primack also describes how warming temperatures have altered other aspects of Thoreau’s Concord, from the dates when ice departs from Walden Pond in late winter, to the arrival of birds in the spring, to the populations of fish, salamanders, and butterflies that live in the woodlands, river meadows, and ponds.
Primack demonstrates that climate change is already here, and it is affecting not just Walden Pond but many other places in Concord and the surrounding region. Although we need to continue pressuring our political leaders to take action, Primack urges us each to heed the advice Thoreau offers in Walden: to “live simply and wisely.” In the process, we can each minimize our own contributions to our warming climate.
A close associate of Chico Mendes, Gomercindo Rodrigues witnessed the struggle between Brazil's rubber tappers and local ranchers—a struggle that led to the murder of Mendes. Rodrigues's memoir of his years with Mendes has never before been translated into English from the Portuguese. Now, Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes makes this important work available to new audiences, capturing the events and trends that shaped the lives of both men and the fragile system of public security and justice within which they lived and worked.
In a rare primary account of the celebrated labor organizer, Rodrigues chronicles Mendes's innovative proposals as the Amazon faced wholesale deforestation. As a labor unionist and an environmentalist, Mendes believed that rain forests could be preserved without ruining the lives of workers, and that destroying forests to make way for cattle pastures threatened humanity in the long run. Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes also brings to light the unexplained and uninvestigated events surrounding Mendes's murder.
Although many historians have written about the plantation systems of nineteenth-century Brazil, few eyewitnesses have captured the rich rural history of the twentieth century with such an intricate knowledge of history and folklore as Rodrigues.
Illustrated with drawings by John Muir and drawings and photos by the Vales, Walking with Muir across Yosemite emphasizes that current visitors to Yosemite—indeed to any national park—can still experience the solitude, wildness, and romanticism of nature. They believe, however, that this modern exploration would benefit from a national parks policy that actively promotes nature study and encourages a more profound interaction between humans and the natural world.
This collection of articles relates to a research area currently developing in the Humanities, which calls for philosophical and historical approaches to questions of sustainable development and waste management. The title of the issue reflects the central questions raised by all contributors: how are waste and abundance represented, how may we conceptualize these representations, and what ethical problems do they raise?
Particular attention is paid to the cultural and moral factors that condition our attitudes to waste and the ways in which literature addresses the problematic relationship that binds production, consumption and waste to social and political systems.
Nearly every human endeavor on the planet was conceived and constructed with a relatively stable climate in mind. But as new climate disasters remind us every day, our world is not stable—and it is changing in ways that expose the deep dysfunction of our relationship with water. Increasingly severe and frequent floods and droughts inevitably spur calls for higher levees, bigger drains, and longer aqueducts. But as we grapple with extreme weather, a hard truth is emerging: our development, including concrete infrastructure designed to control water, is actually exacerbating our problems. Because sooner or later, water always wins.
In this quietly radical book, science journalist Erica Gies introduces us to innovators in what she calls the Slow Water movement who start by asking a revolutionary question: What does water want? Using close observation, historical research, and cutting-edge science, these experts in hydrology, restoration ecology, engineering, and urban planning are already transforming our relationship with water.
Modern civilizations tend to speed water away, erasing its slow phases on the land. Gies reminds us that water’s true nature is to flex with the rhythms of the earth: the slow phases absorb floods, store water for droughts, and feed natural systems. Figuring out what water wants—and accommodating its desires within our human landscapes—is now a crucial survival strategy. By putting these new approaches to the test, innovators in the Slow Water movement are reshaping the future.
Early human relationships with water were expressed through beliefs in serpentine aquatic deities: rainbow-colored, feathered or horned serpents, giant anacondas, and dragons. Representing the powers of water, these beings were bringers of life and sustenance, world creators, ancestors, guardian spirits, and lawmakers. Worshipped and appeased, they embodied people’s respect for water and its vital role in sustaining all living things. Yet today, though we still recognize that “water is life,” fresh- and saltwater ecosystems have been critically compromised by human activities. This major study of water beings and what has happened to them in different cultural and historical contexts demonstrates how and why some—but not all—societies have moved from worshipping water to wreaking havoc upon it and asks what we can do to turn the tide.
Building on these cultural critiques, Freyfogle takes up the issue of private property rights, highlighting the longstanding flexibility of this key American institution as well as the moral imperative to ensure that property rights aren’t used in ways that harm communities. Outdated understandings about private property, he concludes, have further confused our understanding and made sensible solutions to water problems even harder to imagine. Water-policy reform won’t happen, Freyfogle argues, until we reconsider how we understand nature and take charge of the institution of ownership, recasting it so as to increase the benefits it generates for everyone. If we can do that, solutions to water troubles could prove easier than we expect. The work concludes with an original, sweeping policy proposal to resolve the West’s water shortages and meet environmental needs in ways fair to all.
This lecture was presented on March 22, 2017, at the 22nd annual symposium sponsored by the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment at the S. J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah.
According to the editors of this collection of foundational essays, questions surrounding water are inherently ethical. Peter Brown and Jeremy Schmidt contend that all approaches to managing water, no matter how grounded in empirical data, involve value judgments and cultural assumptions. Each of the six sections of the book discuses a different approach to thinking about the relationship between water and humanity, from utilitarianism to eco-feminism to religious beliefs, including Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. Contributors range from Bartholemew, Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church to Nobel Laureate economist Elinor Ostrom and water policy expert Sandra Postel. Each section is framed by an original introductory essay written by the editors.
Water Ethics will help readers understand how various moral perspectives, even when unstated, have guided and will continue to guide water policy around the globe.
The Santa Cruz River that once flowed through Tucson, Arizona is today a sad mirage of a river. Except for brief periods following heavy rainfall, it is bone dry. The cottonwood and willow trees that once lined its banks have died, and the profusion of birds and wildlife recorded by early settlers are nowhere to be seen. The river is dead. What happened? Where did the water go.
As Robert Glennon explains in Water Follies, what killed the Santa Cruz River -- and could devastate other surface waters across the United States -- was groundwater pumping. From 1940 to 2000, the volume of water drawn annually from underground aquifers in Tucson jumped more than six-fold, from 50,000 to 330,000 acre-feet per year. And Tucson is hardly an exception -- similar increases in groundwater pumping have occurred across the country and around the world. In a striking collection of stories that bring to life the human and natural consequences of our growing national thirst, Robert Glennon provides an occasionally wry and always fascinating account of groundwater pumping and the environmental problems it causes.
Robert Glennon sketches the culture of water use in the United States, explaining how and why we are growing increasingly reliant on groundwater. He uses the examples of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro rivers in Arizona to illustrate the science of hydrology and the legal aspects of water use and conflicts. Following that, he offers a dozen stories -- ranging from Down East Maine to San Antonio's River Walk to Atlanta's burgeoning suburbs -- that clearly illustrate the array of problems caused by groundwater pumping. Each episode poses a conflict of values that reveals the complexity of how and why we use water. These poignant and sometimes perverse tales tell of human foibles including greed, stubbornness, and, especially, the unlimited human capacity to ignore reality.
As Robert Glennon explores the folly of our actions and the laws governing them, he suggests common-sense legal and policy reforms that could help avert potentially catastrophic future effects. Water Follies, the first book to focus on the impact of groundwater pumping on the environment, brings this widespread but underappreciated problem to the attention of citizens and communities across America.
WIRED's Required Science Reading 2016
When we think of water in the West, we think of conflict and crisis. In recent years, newspaper headlines have screamed, “Scarce water and the death of California farms,” “The Dust Bowl returns,” “A ‘megadrought’ will grip U.S. in the coming decades.” Yet similar stories have been appearing for decades and the taps continue to flow. John Fleck argues that the talk of impending doom is not only untrue, but dangerous. When people get scared, they fight for the last drop of water; but when they actually have less, they use less.
Having covered environmental issues in the West for a quarter century, Fleck would be the last writer to discount the serious problems posed by a dwindling Colorado River. But in that time, Fleck has also seen people in the Colorado River Basin come together, conserve, and share the water that is available. Western communities, whether farmers and city-dwellers or US environmentalists and Mexican water managers, have a promising record of cooperation, a record often obscured by the crisis narrative.
In this fresh take on western water, Fleck brings to light the true history of collaboration and examines the bonds currently being forged to solve the Basin’s most dire threats. Rather than perpetuate the myth “Whiskey's for drinkin', water's for fightin' over," Fleck urges readers to embrace a new, more optimistic narrative—a future where the Colorado continues to flow.
This text fills that need by providing the necessary knowledge base for understanding and managing complex water problems. It is geared primarily towards students in water management courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels but will also be a helpful resource for practicing water professionals who want to get new ideas or a broader view of the subject.
Rather than focusing on one type of water problem (as many water books do), this text explores the entire gamut of water issues, from dams to desalination, from flooding to famine, from prior appropriation to pumped storage, from sanitation to stormwater. And rather than teaching from one disciplinary perspective (as many water books do), it looks at water problems through a variety of lenses: hydrology, climate science, ecology, and engineering, but also law, economics, history, and environmental justice. The result is a concise yet comprehensive introduction to one of the most critical and demanding challenges of our time: developing just and sustainable solutions to water management.
Water Politics in Northern Nevada examines the Newlands Project, its unintended consequences, and decades of litigation over the abatement of these problems and fair allocation of water. Negotiations and federal legislation brought about the Truckee River Operating Agreement in 2008. This revised edition brings the reader up to date on the implementation of the agreement, including ongoing efforts to preserve and enhance Pyramid Lake. The second edition now also includes a discussion of the Walker River basin, following a major project undertaken to address concerns about the health and viability of Walker Lake. The approaches taken to save these two desert treasures, Pyramid Lake and Walker Lake, are offered as models for resolving similar water-resource conflicts in the West.
Leah J. Wilds’s study is crucial reading for students and scholars of water politics and environmental issues, not just in Nevada but throughout the western United States.
Directed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the 2008 Davos Annual Meeting, the World Economic Forum assembled the world’s foremost group of public, private, non-governmental-organization and academic experts to examine the water crisis issue from all perspectives. The result of their work is this forecast—a stark, non-technical overview of where we will be by 2025 if we take a business-as-usual approach to (mis)managing our water resources. The findings are shocking. Perhaps equally stunning are the potential solutions and the recommendations that the group presents. All are included in this landmark publication.
Water Security contains compelling commentary from leading decision-makers, past and present. The commentary is supported by analysis from leading academics of how the world economy will be affected if world leaders cannot agree on solutions. The book suggests how business and politics need to manage the energy-food-water-climate axis as leaders negotiate the details of the climate regime that replace Kyoto Protocols.
Waters of the United States is an unprecedented exploration of this history—and its importance for today’s efforts to conserve a critical natural resource. The book not only examines how bodies of water are legally defined (and therefore protected), but who gets to decide on these definitions. The result is a fascinating look at the ongoing power struggle between the president and federal agencies, the courts, the states, and Congress, over water quality.
Waters of the United States offers the detailed analysis necessary for any lawyer or environmental advocate to understand the nuances of water policy, while spinning a compelling narrative for readers who have never cracked a law book. The unique mix of insights into environmental law, history, and politics is required reading for anyone who cares about the future of the nation’s water.
With The Way of Coyote, Gavin Van Horn reveals the stupendous diversity of species that can flourish in urban landscapes like Chicago. That isn’t to say city living is without its challenges. Chicago has been altered dramatically over a relatively short timespan—its soils covered by concrete, its wetlands drained and refilled, its river diverted and made to flow in the opposite direction. The stories in The Way of Coyote occasionally lament lost abundance, but they also point toward incredible adaptability and resilience, such as that displayed by beavers plying the waters of human-constructed canals or peregrine falcons raising their young atop towering skyscrapers. Van Horn populates his stories with a remarkable range of urban wildlife and probes the philosophical and religious dimensions of what it means to coexist, drawing frequently from the wisdom of three unconventional guides—wildlife ecologist Aldo Leopold, Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu, and the North American trickster figure Coyote. Ultimately, Van Horn sees vast potential for a more vibrant collective of ecological citizens as we take our cues from landscapes past and present.
Part urban nature travelogue, part philosophical reflection on the role wildlife can play in waking us to a shared sense of place and fate, The Way of Coyote is a deeply personal journey that questions how we might best reconcile our own needs with the needs of other creatures in our shared urban habitats.
Relating his experiences caring for endangered whales, a veterinarian and marine scientist shows we can all share in the salvation of these imperiled animals.
The image most of us have of whalers includes harpoons and intentional trauma. Yet eating commercially caught seafood leads to whales’ entanglement and slow death in rope and nets, and the global shipping routes that bring us readily available goods often lead to death by collision. We—all of us—are whalers, marine scientist and veterinarian Michael J. Moore contends. But we do not have to be.
Drawing on over forty years of fieldwork with humpback, pilot, fin, and, in particular, North Atlantic right whales—a species whose population has declined more than 20 percent since 2017—Moore takes us with him as he performs whale necropsies on animals stranded on beaches, in his independent research alongside whalers using explosive harpoons, and as he tracks injured whales to deliver sedatives. The whales’ plight is a complex, confounding, and disturbing one. We learn of existing but poorly enforced conservation laws and of perennial (and often failed) efforts to balance the push for fisheries profit versus the protection of endangered species caught by accident.
But despite these challenges, Moore’s tale is an optimistic one. He shows us how technologies for ropeless fishing and the acoustic tracking of whale migrations make a dramatic difference. And he looks ahead with hope as our growing understanding of these extraordinary creatures fuels an ever-stronger drive for change.
For more information on Moore’s book and research, please visit his webpage at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Drawing upon the first-person accounts of rangers who have patrolled the area, archival documents, and Michael Yochim’s personal experiences over almost three decades, A Week in Yellowstone’s Thorofare distinguishes between the notions of wildness and wilderness. Through historic vignettes, descriptions of natural resources, and the author’s own experiences, it argues that wildness is the most precious, and easily lost, attribute of wilderness.
The Thorofare is remote not only from roads, but also largely unexplored in the vast body of wilderness literature. A Week in Yellowstone’s Thorofare aims to fill that void. Recognizing both the value and the fragility of wildness, the rangers who manage the area have struggled through many eras to preserve it. This book chronicles many of the struggles through which it has remained protected for visitors today.
Yochim offers poignant insight into the passions that motivate those who manage, defend, and journey through the Thorofare. His story demonstrates the importance of wild places for touching and understanding a fundamental part of the human experience. Part history, memoir, travelogue, natural history, and reflection, the book will appeal to readers interested in preservation, the wilderness movement, the history of National Parks, or the natural treasures of Yellowstone.
Wetlands and riparian areas between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada are incredibly diverse and valuable habitats. More than 80 percent of the wildlife species in this intermountain region depend on these wetlands—which account for less than 2 percent of the land area—for their survival. At the same time, the wetlands also serve the water needs of ranchers and farmers, recreationists, vacation communities, and cities. It is no exaggeration to call water the "liquid gold" of the West, and the burgeoning human demands on this scarce resource make it imperative to understand and properly manage the wetlands and riverine areas of the Intermountain West.
This book offers land managers, biologists, and research scientists a state-of-the-art survey of the ecology and management practices of wetland and riparian areas in the Intermountain West. Twelve articles examine such diverse issues as laws and regulations affecting these habitats, the unique physiographic features of the region, the importance of wetlands and riparian areas to fish, wildlife, and livestock, the ecological function of these areas, their value to humans, and the methods to evaluate these habitats. The authors also address the human impacts on the land from urban and suburban development, mining, grazing, energy extraction, recreation, water diversions, and timber harvesting and suggest ways to mitigate such impacts.
Louisiana's Chenier Plain is a 2,200-square-mile region of marshes and oak-covered ridges (cheniers) that stretches along the Gulf of Mexico from Sabine Lake to Vermilion Bay. Its inhabitants, some 6,000 people of Cajun and other ancestries, retain strong economic and cultural ties to the land and its teeming wildlife. They call it paradise...but it is a vulnerable paradise. In this multifaceted study, Gay Gomez explores the interaction of the land, people, and wildlife of the Chenier Plain, revealing both the uniqueness of the region and the challenges it faces.
After describing the geography and history of the Chenier Plain, Gomez turns to the lifeways of its people. Drawing on their words and stories, she tells how the chenier dwellers combine modern occupations with traditional pursuits such as alligator and waterfowl hunting, fur trapping, and fishing. She shows how these traditions of wildlife use provide both economic incentives for conservation and a source of personal and place identity. This portrait of a "working wetland" reveals how wildlife use and appreciation can give rise to a stewardship that balances biological, economic, and cultural concerns in species and habitat protection.
With more than thirty papers from leading scientists and technicians, Wetland Creation and Restoration draws upon important new information and provides the first major national assessment by region of the capacity to implement a goal of no-net-loss of wetlands. It is a one-of-a-kind compendium of hands-on information about methods of creating, restoring, and enhancing wetlands.
Thompson examines the history of the land drainage movement and the inevitable environmental changes caused by the intensification of urban and rural land use in the Midwest between sixty and one hundred years ago. He shows how institutions of land drainage were organized and operated and how the nascent drainage engineering and contracting sectors functioned. Focusing on the lower valley, Thompson also deals with drainage as it affects the nation, the Midwest, Chicago, and downstate Illinois.
Thompson is the first to address the array of interrelated physical, economic, and political circumstances caused by the development of competing and incompatible uses for the waters and the floodplain of the Illinois River when large-scale land reclamation and great volumes of water from Lake Michigan and Chicago changed land and water relationships, destroyed a major riverine fishing industry, and severely damaged renowned waterfowl hunting grounds.
Despite a decades-long international moratorium on commercial whaling, one fleet has continued to hunt and kill whales in the waters surrounding Antarctica. Refusing to let this defiance go unchallenged, the environmental organization Greenpeace began dispatching expeditions to the region in an effort to intercept the whalers and use nonviolent means to stop their lethal practice.
Over the past decade, Kieran Mulvaney led four such expeditions as a campaigner and coordinator. In The Whaling Season, he recounts those voyages in all their drama, disappointments, strain, and elation, giving readers a behind-the-scenes look at the hazards and triumphs of life as an environmental activist on the high seas. The author also explores the larger struggles underlying the expeditions, drawing on the history of commercial whaling and Antarctic exploration, the development of Greenpeace, and broader scientific and political efforts to conserve marine life. He presents a rich portrait of the current struggles and makes an impassioned plea for protection of some of the world’s most spectacular creatures.
For armchair adventurers, polar enthusiasts, and anyone concerned about marine conservation and continued hunting of the world’s whales, The Whaling Season is an engrossing and informative tale of adventure set in one of the Earth’s last great wilderness areas.
Because Knopp was born and raised just a few blocks away, she considers the Mississippi from the perspective of a native resident, a “dweller in the land.” She revisits places she has long known: Nauvoo, Illinois, the site of two nineteenth-century utopias, one Mormon, one Icarian; Muscatine, Iowa, once the world’s largest manufacturer of pearl (mussel shell) buttons; and the mysterious prehistoric bird- and bear-shaped effigy mounds of northeastern Iowa. On a downriver trip between the Twin Cities and St. Louis, she meditates on what can be found in Mississippi river water—state lines, dissolved oxygen, smallmouth bass, corpses, family history, wrecked steamboats, mayfly nymphs, toxic perfluorinated chemicals, philosophies.
Knopp first encountered the Missouri as a tourist and became acquainted with it through literary and historical documents, as well as stories told by longtime residents. Her journey includes stops at Fort Bellefontaine, where Lewis and Clark first slept on their sojourn to the Pacific; Little Dixie, Missouri’s slaveholding, hemp-growing region, as revealed through the life of Jesse James’s mother; Fort Randall Dam and Lake Francis Case, the construction of which destroyed White Swan on the Yankton Sioux Reservation; and places that produced unique musical responses to the river, including Native American courting flutes, indie rock, Missouri River valley fiddling, Prohibition-era jazz jam sessions, and German folk music.
Knopp’s relationship with the Platte is marked by intentionality: she settled nearby and chose to develop deep and lasting connections over twenty years’ residence. On this adventure, she ponders the half-million sandhill cranes that pass through Nebraska each spring, the ancient varieties of Pawnee corn growing at the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, a never-broken tract of tallgrass prairie, the sugar beet industry, and the changes in the river brought about by the demands of irrigation.
Winner of the 2013 Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction
Honorable Mention for the Association for Literature and the Environment's 2013 Environmental Creative Nonfiction Award
Strips of urban and suburban "fabric" have extended into the countryside, creating a ragged settlement pattern that blurs the distinction between rural, urban, and suburban. As traditional rural industries like farming, forestry, and mining rapidly give way to residential and commercial development, the land at the edges of developed areas -- the rural-urban fringe -- is becoming the middle landscape between city and countryside that the suburbs once were.
When City and Country Collide examines the fringe phenomenon and presents a workable approach to fostering more compact development and better, more sustainable communities in those areas. It provides viable alternatives to traditional land use and development practices, and offers a solid framework and rational perspective for wider adoption of growth management techniques.
The author:
- reviews growth management techniques and obstacles to growth management
- examines the impact of federal spending programs and regulations on growth management
- presents a comprehensive planning process for communities and counties
- discusses state-level spending programs and regulations
- illustrates design principles for new development
- looks at regional planning efforts and regional governments
- discusses ways to protect farmland, forestland, and natural areas to help control sprawl
The book also features a series of case studies -- including Albuquerque, New Mexico; Larimer County, Colorado; Chittenden County, Vermont; and others -- that evaluate the success of efforts to control both the size of the fringe and growth within the fringe. It ends with a discussion of possible futures for fringe areas.
When City and Country Collide is an important guide for planners and students of planning, policymakers, elected officials, and citizens working to minimize sprawl.
For more than half a century, logging, lumber production, and affiliated enterprises in Wisconsin’s Northwoods provided jobs for tens of thousands of Wisconsinites and wealth for many individuals. The industry cut through the lives of nearly every Wisconsin citizen, from an immigrant lumberjack or camp cook in the Chippewa Valley to a Suamico sawmill operator, an Oshkosh factory worker to a Milwaukee banker.
When the White Pine Was King tells the stories of the heyday of logging: of lumberjacks and camp cooks, of river drives and deadly log jams, of sawmills and lumber towns and the echo of the ax ringing through the Northwoods as yet another white pine crashed to the ground. He explores the aftermath of the logging era, including efforts to farm the cutover (most of them doomed to fail), successful reforestation work, and the legacy of the lumber and wood products industries, which continue to fuel the state’s economy.
Enhanced with dozens of historic photos, When the White Pine Was King transports readers to the lumber boom era and reveals how the lessons learned in the vast northern forestlands continue to shape the region today.
already been lost. But he also shows what resilient farmers and scientists in many regions are doing to save the remaining living riches of our world.
This edition includes a new foreword by environmental historian Donald Worster. Matthews's new afterword describes how with growing support from Native Americans and private groups like the Nature Conservancy, the Poppers' dream of a Buffalo Commons is becoming a reality.
"An admirably crafted book, as poignant and entertaining as it is informative."—Seattle Times
"A priceless piece of Americana."—The Boston Globe
"Matthew's delightful account of the Poppers, their proposal and the controversy surrounding it does focus new attention on the region and its problems."—The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Bright, active, effective journalism. . . . An extremely savvy overlook of the dilemmas of the Great Plains."—Wallace Stegner
Ed Grumbine traveled to the far corners of China’s Yunnan province to find out. He was driven by a single question: could this last fragment of wild nature withstand China’s unrelenting development? But as he hiked through deep-cut emerald mountains, backcountry villages, and burgeoning tourist towns, talking with trekking guides, schoolchildren, and rural farmers, he discovered that the problem wasn’t as simple as growth versus conservation.
In its struggle to "build a well-off society in an all-round way," Beijing juggles a host of competing priorities: health care for impoverished villagers; habitat for threatened tigers; cars for a growing middle class; clean air for all citizens; energy to power new cities; rubber for the global marketplace.
Where the Dragon Meets the Angry River is an incisive look at the possible fates of China and the planet. Will the Angry River continue to flow? Will Tibetan girls from subsistence farming families learn to read and write? Can China and the United States come together to lead action on climate change? Far-reaching in its history and scope, this unique book shows us the real-world consequences of conservation and development decisions now being made in Beijing and beyond.
Originally published in 1982, Where the Sky Began, John Madson’s landmark publication, introduced readers across the nation to the wonders of the tallgrass prairie, sparking the current interest in prairie restoration. Now back in print, this classic tome will serve as inspiration to those just learning about the heartland’s native landscape and rekindle the passion of long-time prairie enthusiasts.
As interest in environmental issues grows, many writers of fiction have embraced themes that explore the connections between humans and the natural world. Ecologically themed fiction ranges from profound philosophical meditations to action-packed entertainments. Where the Wild Books Are offers an overview of nearly 2,000 works of nature-oriented fiction. The author includes a discussion of the precursors and history of the genre, and of its expansion since the 1970s. He also considers its forms and themes, as well as the subgenres into which it has evolved, such as speculative fiction, ecodefense, animal stories, mysteries, ecofeminist novels, cautionary tales, and others. A brief summary and critical commentary of each title is included. Dwyer’s scope is broad and covers fiction by Native American writers as well as ecofiction from writers around the world. Far more than a mere listing of books, Where the Wild Books Are is a lively introduction to a vast universe of engaging, provocative writing. It can be used to develop book collections or curricula. It also serves as an introduction to one of the most fertile areas of contemporary fiction, presenting books that will offer enjoyable reading and new insights into the vexing environmental questions of our time.
Combining his signature lively storytelling and careful observations of nature, Apps draws on a lifetime of experiences, from his earliest years growing up on a central Wisconsin farm to his current ventures as gardener, tree farmer, and steward of wetlands, prairies, and endangered Karner blue butterflies. He also takes inspiration from the writings of Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, Henry David Thoreau, Sigurd Olson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, Barbara Kingsolver, Wendell Berry, Richard Louv, and Rachel Carson. With these eloquent essays, Jerry Apps reminds us to slow down, turn off technology, and allow our senses to reconnect us to the natural world. For it is there, he writes, that “I am able to return to a feeling I had when I was a child, a feeling of having room to stretch my arms without interfering with another person, a feeling of being a small part of something much larger than I was, and I marvel at the idea.”
Since the clear-cutting era, naturalists, foresters, and scientists have taken up the quest to restore the great white pine forests. White Pine follows this centuries-long endeavor, illuminating how the efforts shaped Americans’ understanding of key scientific ideas, from forest succession to the importance of fire. With his keen naturalist’s eye, Pastor shows us why restoring the vitality of these forests has not been simple: a host of other creatures depend on white pine and white pine depends on them. In weaving together cultural and natural history, White Pine celebrates the way humans are connected to the forest—and to the larger natural world.
Today, white pine forests have begun to recover, but face the growing threat of climate change. White Pine shows us that hope for healthy forests lies in understanding the lessons of history, so that iconic species survive as a touchstone for future generations.
Global warming has finally made clear the true costs of using our atmosphere as a giant sponge to soak up unwanted by-products of industrial activity. As nations, businesses, and citizens seek workable yet fair solutions for reducing carbon emissions, the question of who should pay -- and how -- looms large. Yet the surprising truth is that a system for protecting the atmosphere could be devised that would yield cash benefits to us all.
In Who Owns the Sky?, visionary entrepreneur Peter Barnes redefines the debate about the costs and benefits of addressing climate change. He proposes a market-based institution called a Sky Trust that would set limits on carbon emissions and pay dividends to all of us, who collectively own the atmosphere as a commons. The Trust would be funded by requiring polluters to pay for the right to emit carbon dioxide, and managed by a non-governmental agency. Dividends would be paid annually, in much the same way that residents of Alaska today receive cash benefits from oil companies that drill in their state.
Employing the same spirit of innovation that brought millions of dollars to the nonprofit sector through his company Working Assets, Barnes sets forth a practical new approach to protecting our shared inheritance -- not only the atmosphere, but water, forests, and other life-sustaining and economically valuable common resources. He shows how we can use markets and property rights to preserve and share the vast wealth around us, allowing us not only to profit from it, but to pass it on, undiminished, to future generations.
Who Owns the Sky? is a remarkable look at the future of our economy, one in which we can retain capitalism's virtues while mitigating its vices. Peter Barnes draws on his personal experience as a successful entrepreneur to offer viable solutions to some of our most pressing environmental and social concerns.
The United States Congress appears to be in perpetual gridlock on environmental policy, notes Sara Rinfret, editor of the significant collection, Who Really Makes Environmental Policy? As she and her contributors explain, however, most environmental policy is not made in the halls of Congress. Instead, it is created by agency experts in federal environmental agencies and it is implemented at the state level. These individuals have been delegated the authority to interpret vague congressional legislation and write rules—and these rules carry the same weight as congressional law.
Who Really Makes Environmental Policy? brings together top scholars to provide an explanation of rulemaking processes and regulatory policy, and to show why this context is important for U.S. environmental policy. Illustrative case studies about oil and gas regulations in Colorado and the regulation of coal ash disposal in southeastern states apply theory to practice. Ultimately, the essays in this volume advance our understanding of how U.S. environmental policy is made and why understanding regulatory policy matters for its future.
Each year, climate change drives more and more species extinct, leaving many fearful for the fate of the planet. Why Biodiversity Loss is Not a Disaster calms such fears: we have no reason to believe fewer species will result in cataclysmic disaster. In this book, philosopher Bas Haring argues that nature is not like a machine that falls apart without all its parts. While some environments depend on the survival of specific species, he contends, these unique relationships cannot be generalized to the planet at large. In the long view, Haring writes, biodiversity loss is a pity but not a disaster.
The National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act is one of the most important natural areas protection programs ever established at the federal level. It has resulted in the creation of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System -- a rich American legacy that includes many of our finest waterways. This book is the definitive resource on the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. Topics covered include:
- the importance of protecting river ecosystems
- state and local protection systems
- the history of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System
- descriptions of each of the major rivers in the system
- how and why rivers are chosen for inclusion
- river management
- continuing threats to rivers
- what can be done to make the system more effective and more inclusive
Wild Forests presents a coherent review of the scientific and policy issues surrounding biological diversity in the context of contemporary public forest management. The authors examine past and current practices of forest management and provide a comprehensive overview of known and suspected threats to diversity.
In addition to discussing general ecological principles, the authors evaluate specific approaches to forest management that have been proposed to ameliorate diversity losses. They present one such policy -- the Dominant Use Zoning Model incorporating an integrated network of "Diversity Maintenance Areas" -- and describe their attempts to persuade the U.S. Forest Service to adopt such a policy in Wisconsin.
Drawing on experience in the field, in negotiations, and in court, the authors analyze the ways in which federal agencies are coping with the mandates of conservation biology and suggest reforms that could better address these important issues. Throughout, they argue that wild or unengineered conditions are those that are most likely to foster a return to the species richness that we once enjoyed.
In Wild Horses of the West, J. Edward de Steiguer provides an entertaining and well-researched look at one of the most controversial animal welfare issues of our time—the protection of free-roaming horses on the West’s public lands. This is the first book in decades to include the entire story of these magnificent animals, from their evolution and biology to their historical integration into conquistador, Native American, and cowboy cultures. And the story isn’t over. De Steiguer goes on to address the modern issues— ecology, conservation, and land management—surrounding wild horses in the West today.
Featuring stunning color photographs of wild horses, this extremely thorough and engaging blend of history, science, and politics will appeal to students of the American West, conservation activists, and anyone interested in the beauty and power of these striking animals.
Dedina grew up in Imperial Beach, California, just north of the Mexican border, and he feels equally at home in Mexico and the States. An expert on gray whales, he eloquently describes the fight he helped to lead against the Mitsubishi Corporation, whose plan to build a salt-processing plant in the San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja California would have destroyed the world’s last undeveloped gray whale lagoon. With similar fervor, Dedina describes helping to construct the unlikely coalition that succeeded in defeating a proposed toll road that would have decimated a legendary California surf spot.
In between, he writes about the first surfers in Baja, the Great Baja Land Rush of the 1990s, Tijuana’s punk music scene, the pop-culture wrestling phenomenon lucha libre, the reasons why ocean pollution must be stopped, and the way HBO took over his hometown. Anyone interested in what’s happening to our natural places or just yearning to read about someone really making a difference in the world will find this a book worth sinking their teeth into.
This book aims to introduce to a larger audience issues that are too often limited to scholarly circles. A thought-provoking collection of essays by some of the environmental movement's preeminent thinkers, The Wilderness Condition explores the dynamic tension between wild nature and civilization, offering insights into why the relationship has become adversarial and suggesting creative means for reconciliation. Contributors include Paul Shepard, Curt Meine, Max Oelschlaeger, and George Sessions.
To further understanding of the meanings and values of wilderness, this volume explores wilderness and its significance to humans from myriad viewpoints, based on a meeting of the North American Interdisciplinary Wilderness Conference.
During the summer of 2000, Americans from coast to coast witnessed the worst fire season in recorded history. Daily news reports brought dramatic images of vast swaths of land going up in smoke, from the mountains of Montana and Wyoming, to the scrublands of Texas, to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a controlled burn gone awry threatened forests, homes, and even our nation's nuclear secrets. As they have for centuries, wildfires captured our attention and our imagination, reminding us of the power of the natural forces that shape our world.
In Wildfire: A Reader nature writer and wildland firefighter Alianor True gathers together for the first time some of the finest stories and essays ever written about wildfire in America. From Mark Twain to Norman Maclean to Edward Abbey, writers featured here depict and record wildfires with remarkable depth and clarity. An ecological perspective is well represented through the works of John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and John McPhee. Ed Engle, Louise Wagenknecht, and Gretchen Yost, firefighters from the front lines, give us exciting first-person perspectives, reliving their on-the-ground encounters with forest fires.
The works gathered in Wildfire not only explore the sensory and aesthetic aspects of fire, but also highlight how much attitudes have changed over the past 200 years. From Native Americans who used fire as a tool, to early Americans who viewed it as a frightening and destructive force, to Aldo Leopold and other conservationists whose ideas caused us to rethink the value and role of fire, this rich collection is organized around those shifts in thinking.
Capturing the fury and the heat of a raging inferno, or the quiet emergence of wildflowers sprouting from ashes, the writings included in Wildfire represent a vital and compelling addition to the nature writing and natural history bookshelf.
Americans are having an increasing impact on the rural landscape as development further encroaches in former wilderness areas. This disruptive land use is causing a decline in wildlife and wildlife habitats. Wildlife and Habitats in Managed Landscapes presents a new strategy for solving this problem by redefining habitats to include the concept of landscape. Employing this strategy, natural resource managers apply tools of planning, management, and design to entire landscapes to meet the needs of both wildlife and humans.
Wildlife and Recreationists defines and clarifies the issues surrounding the conflict between outdoor recreation and the health and well-being of wildlife and ecosystems. Contributors to the volume consider both direct and indirect effects of widlife-recreationist interactions, including:
- wildlife responses to disturbance, and the origins of these responses
- how specific recreational activities affect diverse types of wildlife
- the human dimensions of managing recreationists
- the economic importance of outdoor recreation
- how wildlife and recreationists might be able to coexist
The editors and contributors to Wildlife Crime examine topical issues from extinction to trafficking in order to understand the ecological, economic, political, and social costs and consequences of these crimes. Drawing from diverse theoretical perspectives, empirical and methodological developments, and on-the-ground experiences of practitioners, this comprehensive volume looks at how conservationists and law enforcement grapple with and combat environmental crimes and the profitable market for illegal trade.
Chapters cover criminological perspectives on species poaching, unregulated fishing, the trading of ivory and rhino horns, the adoption of conservation technologies, and ranger workplaces and conditions. The book includes firsthand experiences and research from China, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania, and the United States. The result is a significant book about the causes of and response to wildlife crime.
Contributors include: Johan Bergenas, Avi Brisman, Craig Forsyth, Meredith Gore, Georg Jaster, Alex Killion, Kasey Kinnard, Antony C. Leberatto, Barney Long, Nerea Marteache, Gohar Petrossian, Jonah Ratsimbazafy, Gary Roloff, Viviane Seyranian, Louise Shelley, Rohit Singh, Nicole Sintov, Nigel South, Milind Tambe, Daan van Uhm, Greg Warchol, Rodger Watson, Rob White, Madelon Willemsen, and the editor.
Elephants rarely breed in captivity and are not considered domesticated, yet they interact with people regularly and adapt to various environments. Too social and sagacious to be objects, too strange to be human, too captive to truly be wild, but too wild to be domesticated—where do elephants fall in our understanding of nature?
In Wildlife in the Anthropocene, Jamie Lorimer argues that the idea of nature as a pure and timeless place characterized by the absence of humans has come to an end. But life goes on. Wildlife inhabits everywhere and is on the move; Lorimer proposes the concept of wildlife as a replacement for nature. Offering a thorough appraisal of the Anthropocene—an era in which human actions affect and influence all life and all systems on our planet— Lorimer unpacks its implications for changing definitions of nature and the politics of wildlife conservation. Wildlife in the Anthropocene examines rewilding, the impacts of wildlife films, human relationships with charismatic species, and urban wildlife. Analyzing scientific papers, policy documents, and popular media, as well as a decade of fieldwork, Lorimer explores the new interconnections between science, politics, and neoliberal capitalism that the Anthropocene demands of wildlife conservation.
Imagining conservation in a world where humans are geological actors entangled within and responsible for powerful, unstable, and unpredictable planetary forces, this work nurtures a future environmentalism that is more hopeful and democratic.
This revised and expanded second edition retains key sections from the first edition, describing basic legal concepts while offering important updates that address recent legal topics. New chapters cover timely issues such as private wildlife reserves and game ranches, and the increased prominence of nuisance species as well as an expanded discussion of the Endangered Species Act, now more than 40 years old. Chapter sidebars showcase pertinent legal cases illustrating real-world application of the legal concepts covered in the main text.
Accessibly written, this is an essential, groundbreaking reference for professors and students in natural resource and wildlife programs, land owners, and wildlife professionals.
This volume presents the results of a five-year study of wildlife-management policies in national parks. It synthesizes interviews with individuals inside and outside the National Park Service, provides a comprehensive review of published and unpublished literature, and draws on the collective experience of the authors with various units of the system over the past three decades. Among the topics examined are:
- the structure and history of the National Park System and Service
- wildlife "problems" in the parks
- the role of science in formulating policies and in management
- recommendations for changes in policy formulation, management, and scientific research procedures
Wildlife Restoration links restoration ecology and wildlife management in an accessible and comprehensive guide to restoring wildlife and the habitats upon which they depend. It offers readers a thorough overview of the types of information needed in planning a wildlife-habitat restoration project and provides the basic tools necessary for developing and implementing a rigorous monitoring program. The book:
- explains the concepts of habitat and niche: their historic development, components, spatial-temporal relationships, and role in land management
- reviews how wildlife populations are identified and counted
- considers captive breeding, reintroduction, and translocation of animals
- discusses how wildlife and their habitat needs can be incorporated into restoration planning
- develops a solid justification for monitoring and good sampling design in restoration projects
- discusses and critiques case histories of wildlife analysis in restoration projects
The author does not offer a "cookbook" approach, but rather provides basic tools for understanding ecological concepts that can be used to design restoration projects with specific goals for wildlife. He focuses on developing an integrated approach to large-scale landscape restoration. In addition, he provides guidance on where more advanced and detailed literature can be found.
Wildlife Restoration sets forth a clear explanation of key principles of wildlife biology for the restorationist, and will allow wildlife biologists to bring the insights of their field to restoration projects. It is an essential source of information for everyone involved with studying, implementing, or managing wildlife restoration projects, including students, ecologists, administrators, government agency staff, and volunteer practitioners.
National Audubon Society sanctuaries across the United States preserve the unique combinations of plants, climates, soils, and water that endangered birds and other animals require to survive. Their success stories include the recovery of the common and snowy egrets, wood storks, Everglade kites, puffins, and sandhill cranes, to name only a few.
In this book, Frosty Anderson describes the development of fifteen NAS sanctuaries from Maine to California and from the Texas coast to North Dakota. Drawn from the newsletter "Places to Hide and Seek," which he edited during his tenure as Director/Vice President of the Wildlife Sanctuary Department of the NAS, these profiles offer a personal, often humorous look at the daily and longer-term activities involved in protecting bird habitats. Collectively, they record an era in conservation history in which ordinary people, without benefit of Ph.Ds, became stewards of the habitats in which they had lived all their lives. It's a story worth preserving, and it's entertainingly told here by the man who knows it best.
This book charts a different path. Exploring how people can become attuned to the wild community of life and also contribute to the well-being of the wild places in which we live, work, and play, Wildness brings together esteemed authors from a variety of landscapes, cultures, and backgrounds to share their stories about the interdependence of everyday human lifeways and wildness. As they show, far from being an all or nothing proposition, wildness exists in variations and degrees that range from cultivated soils to multigenerational forests to sunflowers pushing through cracks in a city alley. Spanning diverse geographies, these essays celebrate the continuum of wildness, revealing the many ways in which human communities can nurture, adapt to, and thrive alongside their wild nonhuman kin.
From the contoured lands of Wisconsin’s Driftless region to remote Alaska, from the amazing adaptations of animals and plants living in the concrete jungle to indigenous lands and harvest ceremonies, from backyards to reclaimed urban industrial sites, from microcosms to bioregions and atmospheres, manifestations of wildness are everywhere. With this book, we gain insight into what wildness is and could be, as well as how it might be recovered in our lives—and with it, how we might unearth a more profound, wilder understanding of what it means to be human.
Wildness: Relations of People and Place is published in association with the Center for Humans and Nature, an organization that brings together some of the brightest minds to explore and promote human responsibilities to each other and the whole community of life. Visit the Center for Humans and Nature's Wildness website for upcoming events and a series of related short films.
The controversy over the management of national forests in the Pacific Northwest vividly demonstrates the shortcomings of existing management institutions and natural resource policies. The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl explores the American policymaking process through the case of the spotted owl -- a case that offers a striking illustration of the failure of our society to cope with long-term, science-intensive issues requiring collective choices.
Steven Lewis Yaffee analyzes the political and organizational dynamics from which the controversy emerged and the factors that led to our stunning inability to solve it. He examines the state of resource management agencies and policy processes, providing insight into questions such as:
- What caused the extreme polarization of opinion and lack of communication throughout the 1980s and early 1990s?
- How can the inadequate response of government agencies and the failure of the decisionmaking process be explained?
- What kinds of changes must be made to enable our resource policy institutions to better deal with critical environmental issues of the 1990s and beyond?
Some parks, preserves, and other natural areas serve people well; others are disappointing. Successful design and management requires knowledge of both people and environments.
With People in Mind explores how to design and manage areas of "everyday nature" -- parks and open spaces, corporate grounds, vacant lots and backyard gardens, fields and forests -- in ways that are beneficial to and appreciated by humans. Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan, leading researchers in the field of environmental psychology, along with Robert Ryan, a landscape architect and urban planner, provide a conceptual framework for considering the human dimensions of natural areas and offer a fresh perspective on the subject. The authors examine.
physical aspects of natural settings that enhance preference and reduce fear ways to facilitate way-finding how to create restorative settings that allow people to recover from the stress of daily demands landscape elements that are particularly important to human needs techniques for obtaining useful public input
Maparyan organizes the contributions around five key ideas. The first section looks at womanist self-care as a life-saving strategy. The second examines healing the Earth as a prerequisite to healing ourselves. In Part Three, the essays illuminate how womanism’s politics of invitation provides a strategy for enlarging humanity’s circle of inclusion, while Part Four considers womanism as both a challenge and antidote to dehumanization. The final section delves into womanism’s potential for constructing worlds and futures. In addition, Maparyan includes a section of works by womanist visual artists.
Defiant and far-sighted, Womanism Rising takes readers on a journey into a new generation of concepts, ideas, and strategies for womanist studies.
The lavish array of organisms known as "biodiversity" is an intricately linked web that makes the earth a uniquely habitable planet. Yet pressures from human activities are destroying biodiversity at an unprecedented rate. How many species can be lost before the ecological systems that nurture life begin to break down?
In The Work of Nature, noted science writer Yvonne Baskin examines the threats posed to humans by the loss of biodiversity. She summarizes and explains key findings from the ecological sciences, highlighting examples from around the world where shifts in species have affected the provision of clean air, pure water, fertile soils, lush landscapes, and stable natural communities.
As Baskin makes clear, biodiversity is much more than number of species -- it includes the complexity, richness, and abundance of nature at all levels, from the genes carried by local populations to the layout of communities and ecosystems across the landscape. Ecologists are increasingly aware that mankind's wanton destruction of living organisms -- the planet's work force -- threatens to erode our basic life support services. With uncommon grace and eloquence, Baskin demonstrates how and why that is so.
Distilling and bringing to life the work of the world's leading ecologists, The Work of Nature is the first book of its kind to clearly explain the practical consequences of declining biodiversity on ecosystem health and function.
The authors challenge prevailing cultural narratives that separate ecological and human health from the impacts of modern industrial capitalism. Essay themes range from how human survival is linked to nature to how the use and abuse of nature benefit the wealthy elite at the expense of working-class people and the working poor as well as how climate change will affect cultures deeply rooted in the land.
Ultimately, Working on Earth calls for a working-class ecology as an integral part of achieving just and sustainable human development.
Worlds Apart presents a cohesive set of essays by leading thinkers on the subject of globalization, offering a thoughtful overview of the major environmental issues related to globalization in a clear, reasoned style. Framed by Gus Speth’s introduction and conclusion, essays range from Jane Lubchenco’s discussion of the scientific indicators of global environmental change to Robert Kates’ examination of the prospect that our growing global interconnectedness could lead a transition to a more sustainable world to Vandana Shiva’s impassioned plea for a new “living democracy” that counters the degrading, dehumanizing tendencies of the global economy. Other contributors include Maurice Strong on the Rio Earth Summit and the future course of environmentalism, José Goldemberg on energy, Jerry Mander on the inherent destructiveness of the global economic system, Stephan Schmidheiny on the forestry industry, and Daniel Esty and Maria Ivanova on global environmental governance.
Edited by one of the world’s leading experts on international environmental issues, the book brings together the most respected thinkers and actors on the world stage to offer a compelling set of perspectives and a solid introduction to the social and environmental dimensions of globalization.
access to basic water requirements for drinking and sanitation
hydropower and dam construction
water law
water and conflict
water and global climate change
international water institutions and activities.
The book features more than fifty charts, tables, and maps that present the most current data on a range of factors including: the availability and use of water; numbers of threatened and endangered aquatic species, dam and desalination capacity worldwide; trends in several devastating water-borne diseases; changes by region in global precipitation patterns since 1900; and much more.
To be published on a biennial basis, The World's Water will be an essential reference for water resources specialists with both government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, resource economists, planners, public policy and public administration experts, environmental lawyers, students and anyone concerned with water issues.
The quality and availability of fresh water are of critical importance to human and ecosystem health. Given its central role in the functioning of all living systems, water is arguably the most important of all natural resources.
Produced biennially, The World's Water provides a comprehensive examination of issues surrounding freshwater resources and their use. It offers analysis of the most significant trends worldwide along with the most current data available on a variety of water-related topics. This 2000-2001 edition features overview chapters on:
- water as a human right
- water and food
- desalination
- stocks and flows of fresh water
- international watersheds and water-related conflicts
- water reclamation/recycling
- the removal of dams
The World's Water is the most comprehensive and up-to-date source of information and analysis on freshwater resources and the political, economic, scientific, and technological issues associated with them. It is an essential reference for water resource professionals in government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, researchers, students, and anyone concerned with water and its use.
The quality and availability of fresh water are of critical importance to human and ecosystem health. Given its central role in the functioning of all living systems, water is arguably the most important of all natural resources.
Produced biennially, The World's Water provides a timely examination of the key issues surrounding freshwater resources and their use. Each new volume identifies and explains the most significant current trends worldwide, and offers the best data available on a variety of water-related topics.
This 2004-2005 edition of The World's Water features overview chapters on: conservation and efficiency as key tools for meeting freshwater needs; bottled water quality, costs, and trends; United Nations millennium development goals; groundwater issues; case studies of water privatization; the economic value of water; California water policy and climate change.
The World's Water is the most comprehensive and up-to-date source of information and analysis on freshwater resources and the political, economic, scientific, and technological issues associated with them. It is an essential reference for water resource professionals in government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, researchers, students, and anyone concerned with water and its use.
Produced biennially, The World's Water is the most comprehensive and up-to-to date source of information and analysis on freshwater resources. Each new volume examines critical global trends and offers the best data available on a variety of topics related to water.
Volume 8 features chapters on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), water footprints, sustainable water jobs, and desalination financing, among other timely issues. Water briefs provide concise updates on topics including the Dead-Sea and the role of water in the Syrian conflict.
The World's Water is coauthored by MacArthur "genius" Peter H. Gleick and his colleagues at the world-renowned Pacific Institute. Since the first volume was published in 1998, the series has become an indispensable resource for professionals in government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, researchers, students, and anyone concerned with water and its use.
Questions about land use, conservation, and preservation—already so perplexing and contentious—take on a new complexity and greater urgency when the land in question is understood as sacred. This is a view increasingly held, as adherents of mainstream religions come to recognize what indigenous peoples knew centuries ago—that the sacred inheres in nature itself. What such a trend means and how it involves the forces of culture, religion, and constitutional law (especially First Amendment clauses concerning the free exercise of religion) are considered with a remarkable breadth and depth of understanding in this important new work.
Drawing on case studies of national parks and monuments, national forests, and other public lands and resources, Lloyd Burton gives a clear and comprehensive account of how the intertwining influences of culture, religion, and law have affected the management of public lands and resources in the recent past and how they may do so in the future. In a unique and unprecedented way, his book weaves together teachings on nature and the sacred among indigenous and immigrant culture groups in the United States; the relevant constitutional history of religion and government action; and analysis of contemporary conflicts over culture, religion, and public lands management. As such, Worship and Wilderness is essential reading not only for public land managers and environmental policy makers but also for anyone interested in the growing significance of religious interests in the use of resources that constitute our national commons and our common natural heritage.
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