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Sustainable Food System Assessment: Lessons from Global Practice (Routledge Studies in Food, Society and the Environment)

by Blay-Palmer Alison Damien Conaré Ken Meter Amanda Di Battista Carla Johnston

Sustainable Food System Assessment provides both practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, and highlights points of conceptual and methodological convergence. Interest in assessing food system sustainability is growing, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the importance food systems initiatives have taken in serving as a lever for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book opens by looking at the conceptual considerations of food systems indicators, including the place-based dimensions of food systems indicators and how measurements are implicated in sense-making and visioning processes. Chapters in the second part cover operationalizing metrics, including the development of food systems indicator frameworks, degrees of indicator complexities, and practical constraints to assessment. The final part focuses on the outcomes of assessment projects, including impacts on food policy and communities involved, highlighting the importance of building connections between sustainable food systems initiatives. The global coverage and multi-scalar perspectives, including both conceptual and practical aspects, make this a key resource for academics and practitioners across planning, geography, urban studies, food studies, and research methods. It will also be of interest to government officials and those working within NGOs.

Sustainable Food System Assessment: Lessons from Global Practice (Routledge Studies in Food, Society and the Environment)

by Blay-Palmer Alison Damien Conaré Ken Meter Amanda Di Battista Carla Johnston

Sustainable Food System Assessment provides both practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, and highlights points of conceptual and methodological convergence. Interest in assessing food system sustainability is growing, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the importance food systems initiatives have taken in serving as a lever for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book opens by looking at the conceptual considerations of food systems indicators, including the place-based dimensions of food systems indicators and how measurements are implicated in sense-making and visioning processes. Chapters in the second part cover operationalizing metrics, including the development of food systems indicator frameworks, degrees of indicator complexities, and practical constraints to assessment. The final part focuses on the outcomes of assessment projects, including impacts on food policy and communities involved, highlighting the importance of building connections between sustainable food systems initiatives. The global coverage and multi-scalar perspectives, including both conceptual and practical aspects, make this a key resource for academics and practitioners across planning, geography, urban studies, food studies, and research methods. It will also be of interest to government officials and those working within NGOs.

Routledge Handbook of Water Law and Policy (Routledge Environment and Sustainability Handbooks)

by Alistair Rieu-Clarke, Andrew Allan and Sarah Hendry

Water plays a key role in addressing the most pressing global challenges of our time, including climate change adaptation, food and energy security, environmental sustainability and the promotion of peace and stability. This comprehensive handbook explores the pivotal place of law and policy in efforts to ensure that water enables positive responses to these challenges and provides a basis for sound governance. The book reveals that significant progress has been made in recent decades to strengthen the governance of water resource management at different scales, including helping to address international and sub-national conflicts over transboundary water resources. It demonstrates that ‘effective’ laws and policies are fundamental drivers for the safe, equitable and sustainable utilization of water. However, it is also shown that what might constitute an effective law or policy related to water resources management is still hotly debated. As such, the handbook provides an important and definitive reference text for all studying water governance and management.

The Climate Coup

by Mark Alizart

Inaction by governments in the face of climate change is often attributed to a lack of political will or a denial of the seriousness of the situation, but as Mark Alizart argues in this provocative book, we shouldn’t exclude the possibility that part of the reluctance might be motivated by cynicism and even sheer evil: for some people, there are real financial and political benefits to be gained from the chaos that will ensue from environmental disaster. The climate crisis creates its winners – individuals who orchestrate environmental chaos and bet on the collapse of the world as they bet on declining share values. In the face of this veritable ‘carbofascist’ coup targeting humanity, modifying our behaviour as individuals won’t suffice. We must train our critical attention on those financial and political actors who speculate on catastrophe and, in the light of this, we must rethink the strategy of ecological activism. This is a war to win, not a crisis to overcome.

Icefall: Adventures at the Wild Edges of Our Dangerous, Changing Planet

by John All John Balzar

John All has survived encounters with black mamba snakes, run-ins with wild jungle animals, and a brush with death in an icy tomb. No one knows the outer limits of our changing planet quite like him.In May 2014, the mountaineer and scientist John All plunged into a crevasse in the Himalayas, a fall that all but killed him. He recorded a series of dramatic videos as he struggled to climb seven stories back up to the surface with a severely dislocated shoulder, internal bleeding, a battered face covered in blood, and fifteen broken bones--including six cracked vertebrae. The videos became a viral sensation, an urgent and gripping dispatch from one of the least-known extremes of the planet.Yet this climb for his life is only the latest of John All's adventures in some of Earth's most hostile climates. He has also been chased by a wild hyena, scaled Everest, and narrowly missed being hit by an avalanche, all in pursuit of his true calling: the study of how we can master the challenge of our world's changing climate. Icefall is a thrilling adventure story and a report from the extremes of the planet, taking you to collapsing Andean glaciers, hidden jungles in Honduras, and the highest points on Earth. In this gripping account, our changing climate is not a matter of politics; it's a matter of life and death and the human will to survive and thrive in the face of it.

Cities and Climate Change: Climate Policy, Economic Resilience and Urban Sustainability (Palgrave Studies in Climate Resilient Societies)

by Zaheer Allam David Jones Meelan Thondoo

This book explores climate change responsiveness policies for cities and discusses why they have been slow to gain traction despite having been on the international agenda for the last 30 years. The contributing role of cities in accentuating the effects of climate change is increasingly demonstrated in the literature, underscoring the unsustainable models on which urban life has been made to thrive. As these issues become increasingly apparent, there are global calls to adopt more sustainable and equitable models, however doing so will mean the disruption of economies that have historically relied upon pollution-generating industries. In order to address these issues the authors examine them from a cross-disciplinary perspective, bringing in regional, local and urban standpoints to subsequently propose an alternative short-term economic model that could accelerate the adoption of climate change mitigation infrastructures and urban sustainability in urban areas. This book will be of particular value to scholars and students alike in the field of urbanism, sustainability and resilience, as well as practitioners looking at avenues for economically incentivizing sustainable development in various geographical context.

Adaptive Environmental Management: A Practitioner's Guide

by Catherine Allan George Henry Stankey

Adaptive management is the recommended means for continuing ecosystem management and use of natural resources, especially in the context of ‘integrated natural resource management’. Conceptually, adaptive management is simply learning from past management actions to improve future planning and management. However, adaptive management has proved difficult to achieve in practice. With a view to facilitating better practice, this new book presents lessons learned from case studies, to provide managers with ready access to relevant information. Cases are drawn from a number of disciplinary fields, including management of protected areas, watersheds and farms, rivers, forests, biodiversity and pests. Examples from Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, the UK and Europe are presented at a variety of scales, from individual farms, through regional projects, to state-wide planning. While the book is designed primarily for practitioners and policy advisors in the fields of environmental and natural resource management, it will also provide a valuable reference for students and researchers with interests in environmental, natural resource and conservation management.

Stream Ecology: Structure and function of running waters

by J. David Allan

Running waters are enormously diverse, ranging from torrential mountain brooks, to large lowland rivers, to great river systems whose basins occupy subcontinents. While this diversity makes river ecosystems seem overwhelmingly complex, a central theme of this volume is that the processes acting in running waters are general, although the settings are often unique. The past two decades have seen major advances in our knowledge of the ecology of streams and rivers. New paradigms have emerged, such as the river continuum and nutrient spiraling. Community ecologists have made impressive advances in documenting the occurrence of species interactions. The importance of physical processes in rivers has attracted increased attention, particularly the areas of hydrology and geomorphology, and the inter-relationships between physical and biological factors have become better understood. And as is true for every area of ecology during the closing years of the twentieth century it has become apparent that the study of streams and rivers cannot be carried out by excluding the role of human activities, nor can we ignore the urgency of the need for conservation. These developments are brought together in Stream Ecology: Structure and function of running waters, designed to serve as a text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and as a reference book for specialists in stream ecology and related fields.

The Giant's Loo Roll

by Nicholas Allan

This rip-roaring, read-aloud delight follows a giant's toilet roll as it goes on a crazy journey through town, leaving havoc in its wake. What will the townsfolk do with all the enormous sheets of paper? They could build a paper plane, or make 100s of pairs of pants. . . But will there be any paper left for the giant in his time of need?

In Some Lost Place: The first ascent of Nanga Parbat’s Mazeno Ridge

by Sandy Allan

In the summer of 2012, a team of six climbers set out to attempt the first ascent of one of the great unclimbed lines of the Himalaya - the giant Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat, the world's ninth highest mountain. At ten kilometres in length, the Mazeno is the longest route to the summit of an 8,000-metre peak. Ten expeditions had tried and failed to climb this enormous ridge. Eleven days later two of the team, Sandy Allan and Rick Allen, both in their late fifties, reached the summit. They had run out of food and water and began hallucinating wildly from the effects of altitude and exhaustion. Heavy snow conditions meant they would need another three days to descend the far side of the 'killer mountain'. 'I began to wonder whether what we were doing was humanly possible. We had climbed the Mazeno and reached the summit, but we both knew we had wasted too much energy. In among the conflicting emotions, the exhaustion and the elation, we knew our bodies could not sustain this amount of time at altitude indefinitely, especially now we had no water. The slow trickle of attrition had turned into a flood; it was simply a matter of time before our bodies stopped functioning. Which one of us would succumb first?' In Some Lost Place is Sandy Allan's epic account of an incredible feat of endurance and commitment at the very limits of survival - and the first ascent of one of the last challenges in the Himalaya.

The Middle East Water Question: Hydropolitics and the Global Economy

by Tony Allan

Is there enough water on this planet for a global population that will shortly double its present size? The answer is of huge importance for people everywhere, but particularly to the peoples and political leaders of the Middle East and North Africa. Already, the region's economies are as dependant on water from outside the region as they are on the renewable waters of the region. They will be much more dependant in the future. Professor Allan's important new book aims to remove much of the confusion surrounding the issue of water in the Middle East. As well as explaining the particular issues of conflict in the region, he argues that the answer to these problems lies at the global rather than local level. The national water policies of the region (political as well as economic) can only be properly understood at an international level. And it is from this vantage point that solutions - from rendering water globally available to addressing the environmental isses to do with its use - must be found. _The Middle East Water Question_ is a major book by one of the world's leading authorities on water issues - the product of a decade of involvement with officials, professionals, Middle East and North African governments and international agencies such as the World Bank and FAO.

Virtual Water: Tackling the Threat to Our Planet's Most Precious Resource

by Tony Allan

The groundbreaking new concept that reveals the true and hazardous extent of our everyday water consumption. How much water does it take to make a cup of coffee? The answer may shock you: 140 litres! That's the true amount of water used in growing, producing, packaging and shipping the beans you use to make your morning coffee. Your lunchtime hamburger takes 2,400 litres and that favourite pair of blue jeans a whopping 11,000 litres. In fact, all the goods we buy - from food to clothing to computers - have a water cost in the form of virtual water: the powerful new concept that reveals the hidden facts of our real water consumption. At a time when the world's resources are being used up at increasingly alarming rates what can we do to help tackle the threat to our planet's most precious resource? World water expert Tony Allan - creator of the virtual water concept - shows the way. In this stimulating and enjoyable book he exposes the real impact of our modern lifestyle and shows how we as individuals, and governments globally, can make a vital contribution to managing our water use in a more sustainable and planet-friendly way.

Monitoring Biodiversity: Combining Environmental and Social Data

by Anna Allard Keskitalo, E. Carina H. Alan Brown

This book is an exciting reappraisal of the role and practice of biodiversity monitoring, showing how new technologies and software applications are rapidly maturing and can both complement and maintain continuity with the best practice in traditional field skills. Environmental monitoring is a key component in a large number of national programmes and constitutes an important aspect of understanding environmental change and supporting policy development. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Monitoring Biodiversity begins by discussing monitoring as an established field and examines the various budgetary and technological challenges. It examines different methodologies, the variation between countries, and the design features relevant to understanding monitoring systems created for new policy goals or different funding situations. The huge variety of methods revealed across 18 chapters, which vary from statistical designs to remote sensing, interviews, surveys, and new ways of stacking and combining data and thematic information for visualization and modelling, underlines just how mature and multifaceted the modern practice of monitoring can be. It concludes with several problem-based chapters that discuss the design and implementation of environmental monitoring in specific scenarios such as urban and aquatic areas. All chapters include key messages, study questions, and further reading. With a focus on Europe but with international relevance, Monitoring Biodiversity will be an essential resource for students at all levels of environmental monitoring, assessment, and management.

Water Pollution (The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry #5 / 5A)

by B. Allard G. F. Craun N.T. de Oude M. Falkenmark H. L. Golterman T. Lindstrom W. T. Piver

The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry provides the compilation of today's knowledge of processes in the natural environment and the behavior and impact of pollutants. It provides a valuable source for environmental managers, decision-makers, and scientists. Volume 5A is dedicated to water pollution.

Urban Air Pollution: Monitoring and Control Strategies (Nato Science Partnership Subseries: 2 #8)

by Ivo Allegrini Franco DeSantis

This book presents the proceedings of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop which was also financially supported by the National Research Council of Italy. The Workshop was held from October 9 to 15, 1994, at the Centro Ettore Maiorana in Erice, Italy. Over 40 researchers from a wide variety of fields attended the Workshop, which brought to attention the ongoing research on various phenomena related to urban air pollution. The presence of high levels of atmospheric pollutants in the air of several urban centres of developed and developing countries causes a great concern among authorities and public opinion. Some 20% of the European population live in cities of more than 500,000 inhabitants and about 40% in cities of more than 50,000. Since exceedance of the Air Quality Guidelines has been observed to occur worldwide, a great effort has been addressed to the control of primary pollutants, but many problems related to secondary pollutants such as nitrogen containing species (nitrogen oxides, nitric and nitrous acid, ni trates) and photochemical oxidants (ozone, PAN and others) are far from being solved. The importance of atmospheric chemistry in understanding the processes occurring in urban atmospheres has been well recognised, thus there is a strong need to exchange experiences and results from urban centres in different Countries. Indeed, atmospheric pollution is very much dependent on the type of emissions which are very different according to the economic development of the urban centre under consideration.

Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature (Routledge Research in Music)

by Aaron S. Allen Kevin Dawe

AWARD WINNER OF THE 2018 SOCIETY OF ETHNOMUSICLOGY ELLEN KOSKOFF PRIZE This volume is the first sustained examination of the complex perspectives that comprise ecomusicology—the study of the intersections of music/sound, culture/society, and nature/environment. Twenty-two authors provide a range of theoretical, methodological, and empirical chapters representing disciplines such as anthropology, biology, ecology, environmental studies, ethnomusicology, history, literature, musicology, performance studies, and psychology. They bring their specialized training to bear on interdisciplinary topics, both individually and in collaboration. Emerging from the whole is a view of ecomusicology as a field, a place where many disciplines come together. The topics addressed in this volume—contemporary composers and traditional musics, acoustic ecology and politicized soundscapes, material sustainability and environmental crisis, familiar and unfamiliar sounds, local places and global warming, birds and mice, hearing and listening, biomusic and soundscape ecology, and more—engage with conversations in the various realms of music study as well as in environmental studies and cultural studies. As with any healthy ecosystem, the field of ecomusicology is dynamic, but this edited collection provides a snapshot of it in a formative period. Each chapter is short, designed to be accessible to the nonspecialist, and includes extensive bibliographies; some chapters also provide further materials on a companion website: http://www.ecomusicology.info/cde/. An introduction and interspersed editorial summaries help guide readers through four current directions—ecological, fieldwork, critical, and textual—in the field of ecomusicology.

Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature (Routledge Research in Music)

by Aaron S. Allen Kevin Dawe

AWARD WINNER OF THE 2018 SOCIETY OF ETHNOMUSICLOGY ELLEN KOSKOFF PRIZE This volume is the first sustained examination of the complex perspectives that comprise ecomusicology—the study of the intersections of music/sound, culture/society, and nature/environment. Twenty-two authors provide a range of theoretical, methodological, and empirical chapters representing disciplines such as anthropology, biology, ecology, environmental studies, ethnomusicology, history, literature, musicology, performance studies, and psychology. They bring their specialized training to bear on interdisciplinary topics, both individually and in collaboration. Emerging from the whole is a view of ecomusicology as a field, a place where many disciplines come together. The topics addressed in this volume—contemporary composers and traditional musics, acoustic ecology and politicized soundscapes, material sustainability and environmental crisis, familiar and unfamiliar sounds, local places and global warming, birds and mice, hearing and listening, biomusic and soundscape ecology, and more—engage with conversations in the various realms of music study as well as in environmental studies and cultural studies. As with any healthy ecosystem, the field of ecomusicology is dynamic, but this edited collection provides a snapshot of it in a formative period. Each chapter is short, designed to be accessible to the nonspecialist, and includes extensive bibliographies; some chapters also provide further materials on a companion website: http://www.ecomusicology.info/cde/. An introduction and interspersed editorial summaries help guide readers through four current directions—ecological, fieldwork, critical, and textual—in the field of ecomusicology.

Environmental Justice and Urban Resilience in the Global South

by Adriana Allen Liza Griffin Cassidy Johnson

This edited volume provides a fresh perspective on the important yet often neglected relationship between environmental justice and urban resilience. Many scholars have argued that resilient cities are more just cities. But what if the process of increasing the resilience of the city as a whole happens at the expense of the rights of certain groups? If urban resilience focuses on the degree to which cities are able to reorganise in creative ways and adapt to shocks, do pervasive inequalities in access to environmental services have an effect on this ability? This book brings together an interdisciplinary and intergeneration group of scholars to examine the contradictions and tensions that develop as they play out in cities of the Global South through a series of empirically grounded case studies spanning cities of Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe.

Living Without Plastic: More Than 100 Easy Swaps for Home, Travel, Dining, Holidays, and Beyond

by Brigette Allen Christine Wong

A friendly, illustrated guide with more than 100 swaps for the most common single-use plastic items and solutions for leading a plastic-free life, with resources for further advocacy and understanding, and a foreword by the experts from Plastic Oceans International.

Adaptive Management of Social-Ecological Systems

by Craig R. Allen Ahjond S. Garmestani

Adaptive management is an approach to managing social-ecological systems that fosters learning about the systems being managed and remains at the forefront of environmental management nearly 40 years after its original conception. Adaptive management persists because it allows action despite uncertainty, and uncertainty is reduced when learning occurs during the management process. Often termed “learning by doing”, the allure of this management approach has entrenched the concept widely in agency direction and statutory mandates across the globe. This exceptional volume is a collection of essays on the past, present and future of adaptive management written by prominent authors with long experience in developing, implementing, and assessing adaptive management. Moving forward, the book provides policymakers, managers and scientists a powerful tool for managing for resilience in the face of uncertainty.

The Nature Magpie: A Cornucopia of Facts, Anecdotes, Folklore and Literature from the Natural World (Magpie Ser.)

by Daniel Allen

A collection of anecdotes, facts, figures, folklore and literature, The Nature Magpie is a veritable treasure trove of humanity’s thoughts and feelings about nature. With acclaimed nature writer Daniel Allen as your guide, join naturalists, novelists and poets as they explore the most isolated parts of the planet, choose your side – pineapple or durian – in the great 'king of fruits' debate and discover which plants can be used to predict the weather. Meet the roadkill connoisseurs, learn to dance the Hippopotamus Polka, find out the likelihood of sharing your name with a hurricane – and much more.

Books and Naturalists (Collins New Naturalist Library #112)

by David Elliston Allen

Natural history, perhaps more than any other pursuit or study, has always relied heavily on books. Without their basic function of enabling the different kinds of animals and plants to be described in adequate detail, the subject could never have come into being and gone on to thrive as it does today.

The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History

by David Elliston Allen

At once a major resource for historians of science and an excellent introduction to natural history for the general reader, David Allen's The Naturalist in Britain established a precedent for investigating natural history as a social phenomenon. Here the author traces the evolution of natural history from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, from the "herbalizings" of apprentice apothecaries to the establishment of national reserves and international societies to the emergence of natural history as an organized discipline. Along the way he describes the role of scientific ideas, popular fashion, religious motivations, literary influences, the increase of leisure time and disposable income, and the tendency of like-minded persons to form clubs. His comprehensive and entertaining discussion creates a vibrant portrait of a scientific movement inextricably woven into a particular culture.

The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History

by David Elliston Allen

At once a major resource for historians of science and an excellent introduction to natural history for the general reader, David Allen's The Naturalist in Britain established a precedent for investigating natural history as a social phenomenon. Here the author traces the evolution of natural history from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, from the "herbalizings" of apprentice apothecaries to the establishment of national reserves and international societies to the emergence of natural history as an organized discipline. Along the way he describes the role of scientific ideas, popular fashion, religious motivations, literary influences, the increase of leisure time and disposable income, and the tendency of like-minded persons to form clubs. His comprehensive and entertaining discussion creates a vibrant portrait of a scientific movement inextricably woven into a particular culture.

Jim Henson's Enchanted Sisters: Autumn's Secret Gift (Enchanted Sisters)

by Elise Allen Halle Stanford

Sisters Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer are nature's royalty. In Mother Nature's realm, they're responsible for each magical turn of the seasons. When they're not keeping all of nature in balance, the girls play, imagine, and explore their way around their enchanted world. And though they love harmony, the sisters often cross paths with the Weeds - wild boys who bring trouble with them wherever they go. This charming new series comes from The Jim Henson Company and is perfectly suited for newly independent readers who love the Rainbow Fairies and Candy Fairies series. The series launches with Autumn when she loses a special gift from Mother Nature. Can the sisters find the gift before Mother Nature's party?

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