The Global Environment

Globalization is often discussed in terms of its ecological ramifications. Yet, while ecological imbalance is today one of the greatest threats to mankind, globalization is also a reality that is here to stay. The volume, therefore, seeks to address how globalizing and environmental interests can be reconciled. The essays in this volume state that globalization can work both in favour of and against the environment. The major issues discussed in this topical volume are, how globalization can be used to promote environmental reforms; the role of individuals, private organizations and governments in keeping environmental degradation in check and in promoting environmental reform; globalization and ecological inequality; women, the environment and globalization; changing nature of environmental movements; overpopulation and the ecology; the relation between the ecology and the economy; and the effects of global climate changes.

All serious environmental threats are now international in scope and more than one thousand international environmental agreements already exist. Yet the prospects for international cooperation leading to the management of impacts on the planet remain grim. The Global Environment meets the need for an authoritative assessment of the state of international environmental institutions, laws and policies at the end of the 20th century. The book examines disagreements over the meaning of sustainable development, problems inherent in implementing environmental policies and the conflict over the exclusion of developing countries from the Kyoto Protocol. It discusses the profound trade-offs that may be required, the role of international financial interests in promoting incompatible forms of development and analyses international environmental institutions, law and policy and sustainable development.

Case Studies for Integrating Science and the Global Environment is designed to help students of the environment and natural resources make the connections between their training in science and math and today’s complex environmental issues. The book provides an opportunity for students to apply important skills, knowledge, and analytical tools to understand, evaluate, and propose solutions to today’s critical environmental issues. The heart of the book includes four major content areas: water resources; the atmosphere and air quality; ecosystem alteration; and global resources and human needs. Each of these sections features in-depth case studies covering a range of issues for each resource, offering rich opportunities to teach how various scientific disciplines help inform the issue at hand. Case studies provide readers with experience in interpreting real data sets and considering alternate explanations for trends shown by the data. This book helps prepare students for careers that require collaboration with stakeholders and co-workers from various disciplines. Includes global case studies using real data sets that allow readers to practice interpreting data and evaluating alternative explanations Focuses on critical skills and knowledge, encouraging readers to apply science and math to real world problems Employs a system-based approach, linking air, water, and land resources to help readers understand that cause-effect may be complex and solutions to environmental problems require multiple perspectives Includes special features such as links to video clips of scientists at work, boxed information, a solutions section at the end of each case study, and practice exercises

These two volumes provide an authoritative overview of all the major environmental topics. Focusing on the current 'state of the art' as well as the examination of future perspectives. The first volume spotlights the basic sciences and environmental exploitation, exploring issues such as global climates, marine pollution, tourism and the environment, chemical time bombs and the ozone layer. The second volume is devoted to preventitive strategies, technology and management. Recommended techniques for environmental monitoring, waste management, responses to oil spills, ecological engineering are described, as are environmental education and international law. Volume 2 highlights strategies for solving 'man-made' environmental problems. This reference is addressed to scientists and engineers in industry and in academia, government planners and administrators, political scientists, lawyers and economists and promotes understanding between experts in various disciplines.

This book marks a watershed in the social sciences. The qualitative, critical perspective of sociology and allied disciplines challenges the technocentric `managerialism' which dominates environmental policy, its discourse and its impact. The authors explore the relationship between social theory and sustainability in an attempt to transend technical rhetoric and embrace a broader understanding of `nature'.

This volume examines the roles of different actors in the formulation of international and national environmental policy. It starts from the premise that while cooperation among nation states has proven to be necessary to address many transboundary environmental issues, virtually all policies must be implemented at the national or local level. The growing interaction between national and international actors and levels of governance is an increasingly important aspect of international environmental policy. The authors examine the roles of state and non-state actors in safeguarding the environment and advancing sustainable development into the twenty-first century. Each of the five sections focuses on a different actor: states, civil society, market forces, regional arrangements and international organizations. By examining the functions and capabilities of each of these actors, the authors analyse their effectiveness and their relationship with other actors both within and outside of the UN system, providing a useful framework for understanding the multi-actor, multi-issue nature of international environmental policy.

In the wake of the Second World War, internationalists identified science as both the cause of and the solution to world crisis. Unless civilization learned to control the unprecedented powers science had unleashed, global catastrophe was imminent. But the internationalists found hope in the idea of world government. In The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment, Perrin Selcer argues that the metaphor of “Spaceship Earth”—the idea of the planet as a single interconnected system—exemplifies this moment, when a mix of anxiety and hope inspired visions of world community and the proliferation of international institutions. Selcer tells the story of how the United Nations built the international knowledge infrastructure that made the global-scale environment visible. Experts affiliated with UN agencies helped make the “global”—as in global population, global climate, and global economy—an object in need of governance. Selcer traces how UN programs such as UNESCO’s Arid Lands Project, the production of a soil map of the world, and plans for a global environmental-monitoring system fell short of utopian ambitions to cultivate world citizens but did produce an international community of experts with influential connections to national governments. He shows how events and personalities, cultures and ecologies, bureaucracies and ideologies, decolonization and the Cold War interacted to make global knowledge. A major contribution to global history, environmental history, and the history of development, this book relocates the origins of planetary environmentalism in the postwar politics of scale.