313 books match the query 'Environmental policy' and 7 start with o

cover of Obstacles to Environmental Progress: A US Perspective

Obstacles to Environmental Progress

A US Perspective

Peter C. Schulze

University College London, 2022

A comprehensive guide to the impediments facing environmentally progressive agendas.

Despite the comprehensively understood severity of environmental problems faced today, progress in the United States is continually stymied, making sustainability feel like a far-off goal. Obstacles to Environmental Progress takes up the structural, political, and cultural forces that routinely hinder progress on existing environmental issues. Addressing problems both small and large, often regardless of whether an issue is controversial, this book illustrates obstacles that manifest in the United States but are globally pertinent. Peter Schulze identifies eighteen practical obstacles that fall into three categories: scientific challenges to anticipating and detecting problems; political and economic factors that interfere with responding; and obstacles to effective responses. This book seeks to hasten environmental progress by bridging academic disciplines to forewarn and forearm those who might otherwise encounter these anti-environmentalist obstacles in an ad-hoc manner.
 
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cover of Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice against Big Oil and the State

Ogoni Women's Activism

The Transnational Struggle for Justice against Big Oil and the State

Domale Dube

University of Illinois Press, 2025

In 1995, Nigeria’s dictatorial government executed nine Ogoni leaders fighting for civil rights and against Shell Oil’s depredations of Ogoni land. Domale Dube draws on interviews and participant observation to tell the long-ignored story of how women carved out a role in the Ogoni pursuit of justice.

Dube’s account examines and documents the issues that drew women into the movement, from concerns for themselves and their communities to grander visions for the Ogoni. As she shows, these issues not only influenced organizing in Nigeria but also the diaspora in general and the United States in particular. Ogoni women relied upon nonviolent protest to realize their aims. Dube looks at their campaigns and how their actions reflected their concerns, values, interests, and priorities. The result is a rare account of Black women and transnational organizing for women’s, climate, and environmental justice that merges a history of their involvement with an in-depth analysis of the racial, gender, and ethnic dimensions of the Ogoni Struggle.

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cover of Olfactory Rhetoric: Sniffing Out Environmental Problems

Olfactory Rhetoric

Sniffing Out Environmental Problems

Lisa L. Phillips

The Ohio State University Press, 2025

Human senses have the potential to play a significant role in inspiring action to combat climate change. When we smell pollutants in the air, for example, or feel the blast of a polar vortex, we are more likely to act in response to these changes in environmental conditions. However, the sensorium—and particularly our sense of smell—is often downplayed when we consider the rhetorics of environmental crises. In Olfactory Rhetoric, Lisa L. Phillips argues that how we sense the world around us should be a crucial piece of rhetorical evidence when evaluating environmental injustices. Specifically, Phillips elevates olfaction (what we smell) and olfactory rhetoric (how we talk about and experience what we smell) when discussing three contemporary environmental crises set in historically marginalized communities: the Sriracha sauce factory controversy, the Salton Sea scent events, and the Blue Ridge Landfill emissions problem. On a broader scale, Phillips develops an intersectional ecofeminist sensory-rhetorical approach for evaluating how olfactory and sensory persuasions work and how they can be used to advocate for environmental justice and a more breathable future.

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cover of Opening Windows: Embracing New Perspectives and Practices in Natural Resource Social Sciences

Opening Windows

Embracing New Perspectives and Practices in Natural Resource Social Sciences

Kate Sherren

Utah State University Press, 2024

The third decennial review from the International Association for Society and Natural Resources, Opening Windowssimultaneously examines the breadth and societal relevance of Society and Natural Resources (SNR) knowledge, explores emergent issues and new directions in SNR scholarship, and captures the increasing diversity of SNR research. Authors from various backgrounds—career stage, gender and sexuality, race/ethnicity, and global region—provide a fresh, nuanced, and critical look at the field from both researchers’ and practitioners’ perspectives.
 
This reflexive book is organized around four key themes: diversity and justice, governance and power, engagement and elicitation, and relationships and place. This is not a complacent volume—chapters point to gaps in conventional scholarship and to how much work remains to be done. Power is a central focus, including the role of cultural and economic power in “participatory” approaches to natural resource management and the biases encoded into the very concepts that guide scholarly and practical work. The chapters include robust literature syntheses, conceptual models, and case studies that provide examples of best practices and recommend research directions to improve and transform natural resource social sciences. An unmistakable spirit of hope is exemplified by findings suggesting positive roles for research in the progress ahead.
 
Bringing fresh perspectives on the assumptions and interests that underlie and entangle scholarship on natural resource decisionmaking and the justness of its outcomes, Opening Windows is significant for scholars, students, natural resource practitioners, managers and decision makers, and policy makers.
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cover of Opposing Power: Building Opposition Alliances in Electoral Autocracies

Opposing Power

Building Opposition Alliances in Electoral Autocracies

Elvin Ong

University of Michigan Press, 2022

Opposing Power argues that perceptions of regime vulnerability and mutual dependency by opposition elites shape the building of opposition alliances. When electoral autocracies are consistently dominant, opposition parties eschew fully fledged alliances. At best, they allocate only one candidate to contest against the incumbent in each subnational electoral district to avoid splitting the opposition vote. However, when multiple regime-debilitating events strike within a short period of time, thus pushing an incumbent to the precipice of power, opposition elites expect victory, accepting costly compromises to build alliances and seize power. Opposing Power shows how oppositions build these alliances through case study comparisons in East and Southeast Asia—between the Philippines and South Korea in the late 1980s, and between Malaysia and Singapore from 1965 to 2020.
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cover of Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice

Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed

Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice

Shannon Elizabeth Bell

University of Illinois Press, 2013

Motivated by a deeply rooted sense of place and community, Appalachian women have long fought against the damaging effects of industrialization. In this collection of interviews, sociologist Shannon Elizabeth Bell presents the voices of twelve Central Appalachian women, environmental justice activists fighting against mountaintop removal mining and its devastating effects on public health, regional ecology, and community well-being.

 Each woman narrates her own personal story of injustice and tells how that experience led her to activism. The interviews--many of them illustrated by the women's "photostories"--describe obstacles, losses, and tragedies. But they also tell of new communities and personal transformations catalyzed through activism. Bell supplements each narrative with careful notes that aid the reader while amplifying the power and flow of the activists' stories. Bell's analysis outlines the relationship between Appalachian women's activism and the gendered responsibilities they feel within their families and communities. Ultimately, Bell argues that these women draw upon a broader "protector identity" that both encompasses and extends the identity of motherhood that has often been associated with grassroots women's activism. As protectors, the women challenge dominant Appalachian gender expectations and guard not only their families but also their homeplaces, their communities, their heritage, and the endangered mountains that surround them.

30% of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to organizations fighting for environmental justice in Central Appalachia.

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cover of Oyster Wars and the Public Trust: Property, Law, and Ecology in New Jersey History

Oyster Wars and the Public Trust

Property, Law, and Ecology in New Jersey History

Bonnie J. McCay

University of Arizona Press, 1998

Who owns tidal waters? Are oyster beds common holdings or private property? Questions first raised in colonial New Jersey helped shape American law by giving rise to the public trust doctrine. Today that concept plays a critical role in public advocacy and environmental law.

Bonnie McCay now puts that doctrine in perspective by tracing the history of attempts to defend common resources against privatization. She tells of conflicts in New Jersey communities over the last two centuries: how fishermen dependent on common-use rights employed poaching, piracy, and test cases to protect their stake in tidal resources, and how oyster planters whose businesses depended on the enclosure of marine commons engineered test cases of their own to seek protection for their claims.

McCay presents some of the most significant cases relating to fishing and waterfront development, describing how the oyster wars were fought on the waters and in the court rooms—and how the public trust doctrine was sometimes reinterpreted to support private interests. She explores the events and people behind the proceedings and addresses the legal, social, and ecological issues these cases represent.

Oyster Wars and the Public Trust is an important study of contested property rights from an anthropological perspective that also addresses significant issues in political ecology, institutional economics, environmental history, and the evolution of law. It contributes to our understanding of how competing claims to resources have evolved in the United States and shows that making nature a commodity remains a moral problem even in a market-driven economy.

 
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