Environmental Resilience

Ecological resilience provides a theoretical foundation for understanding how complex systems adapt to and recover from localized disturbances like hurricanes, fires, pest outbreaks, and floods, as well as large-scale perturbations such as climate change. Ecologists have developed resilience theory over the past three decades in an effort to explain surprising and nonlinear dynamics of complex adaptive systems. Resilience theory is especially important to environmental scientists for its role in underpinning adaptive management approaches to ecosystem and resource management. Foundations of Ecological Resilience is a collection of the most important articles on the subject of ecological resilience—those writings that have defined and developed basic concepts in the field and help explain its importance and meaning for scientists and researchers. The book’s three sections cover articles that have shaped or defined the concepts and theories of resilience, including key papers that broke new conceptual ground and contributed novel ideas to the field; examples that demonstrate ecological resilience in a range of ecosystems; and articles that present practical methods for understanding and managing nonlinear ecosystem dynamics. Foundations of Ecological Resilience is an important contribution to our collective understanding of resilience and an invaluable resource for students and scholars in ecology, wildlife ecology, conservation biology, sustainability, environmental science, public policy, and related fields.

Environmental Resilience and Transformation in Times of COVID-19: Climate Change Effects on Environmental Functionality is a timely reference to better understand environmental changes amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns. The book is organized into five themes: (1) environmental modifications, degradation, and human health risks; (2) water resources—planning, management, and governance; (3) air quality—monitoring, fate, transport, and drivers of socioenvironmental change; (4) marine and lacustrine environment; and (5) sustainable development goals and environmental justice. These themes provide an insight into the impact of COVID-19 on the environment and vice versa, which will help improve environmental management and planning, as well as influence future policies. Featuring many case studies from around the globe, this book offers a crucial examination of the intersectionality between climate, sustainability, the environment, and public health for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in environmental science. Features global case studies to illustrate themes and address issues to support environmental management Offers fundamental and practical understanding of ways to improve and validate predictive abilities and tools in addition to response Examines climate-related trends in the spread of the pandemic Presents different ways forward in order to achieve global goals with a specific focus on SDGs

Urban centres are bastions of inequalities, where poverty, marginalization, segregation and health insecurity are magnified. Minorities and the poor – often residing in neighbourhoods characterized by degraded infrastructures, food and job insecurity, limited access to transport and health care, and other inadequate public services – are inherently vulnerable, especially at risk in times of shock or change as they lack the option to avoid, mitigate and adapt to threats. Offering both theoretical and practical approaches, this book proposes critical perspectives and an interdisciplinary lens on urban inequalities in light of individual, group, community and system vulnerabilities and resilience. Touching upon current research trends in food justice, environmental injustice through socio-spatial tactics and solution-based approaches towards urban community resilience, Resilience, Environmental Justice and the City promotes perspectives which transition away from the traditional discussions surrounding environmental justice and pinpoints the need to address urban social inequalities beyond the build environment, championing approaches that help embed social vulnerabilities and resilience in urban planning. With its methodological and dynamic approach to the intertwined nature of resilience and environmental justice in urban cities, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners within urban studies, environmental management, environmental sociology and public administration.

Environmental law envisions ecological systems as existing in an equilibrium state, reinforcing a rigid legal framework unable to absorb rapid environmental changes and innovations in sustainability. For the past four decades, "resilience theory," which embraces uncertainty and nonlinear dynamics in complex adaptive systems, has provided a robust, invaluable foundation for sound environmental management. Reforming American law to incorporate this knowledge is the key to sustainability. This volume features top legal and resilience scholars speaking on resilience theory and its legal applications to climate change, biodiversity, national parks, and water law.

In recent years, resilience theory has come to occupy the core of our understanding and management of the adaptive capacity of people and places in complex social and environmental systems. Despite this, tourism scholars have been slow to adopt resilience concepts, at a time when the emergence of new frameworks and applications is pressing. Drawing on original empirical and theoretical insights in resilience thinking, this book explores how tourism communities and economies respond to environmental changes, both fast (natural hazard disasters) and slow (incremental shifts). It explores how tourism places adapt, change, and sometimes transform (or not) in relation to their environmental context, with an awareness of intersection with societal dynamics and links to political, economic and social drivers of change. Contributions draw on empirical research conducted in a range of international settings, including indigenous communities, to explore the complexity and gradations of environmental change encounters and resilience planning responses in a range of tourism contexts. As the first book to specifically focus on environmental change from a resilience perspective, this timely and original work makes a critical contribution to tourism studies, tourism management and environmental geography, as well as environmental sciences and development studies.

This book discusses the production, distribution, regulatory and management frameworks that affect food in urban settings. It plugs a gap in knowledge especially in the sub-Saharan Africa region where food, despite its critical importance, has been ignored as a ‘determinant of success’ in the planning and management of cities and towns. The various chapters in the book demonstrate how urban populations in Zimbabwe and elsewhere have often devised ways to produce own food to supplement on their incomes. Food is produced largely by way of urban agriculture or imported from the countryside and sold in both formal and informal stores and stalls. The book shows how in spite of the important space food occupies in the lives of all city residents, the planning and regulatory framework does not facilitate the better performance of food systems.

Agrobiodiversity and agroecology go hand-in-hand in promoting environmental resilience in international food systems as well as climate change resilient food policy. This book contextualizes how various legal frameworks address agrobiodiversity and agroecology around the globe and makes it accessible for audiences of students, practitioners, educators, and scholars. Some chapters focus on the legal regulation of agroecology from a food law perspective. Others are geared toward providing regulators, lawmakers and attorneys with the scientific and policy background of those concepts, so that they are equipped in the field of food law in everyday practice and policy. Climate change dimensions of the issues are woven throughout the book.

There are two themes: Indigenous reconciliation and environmental resilience. The purpose is to inform and inspire action – to quicken the pace of reconciliation and lessen the pace of global warming. The chapters, loosely held together by personal experience, may be read in any order like a magazine or a blog.