Altered Policy Landscapes

Altered Policy Landscapes
Author: Robert E. Forbis Jr.
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2019-01-31
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3030047741

This book documents the United States Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) shift from a rancher-dominated agency to an energy-dominated agency. This shift is analyzed by identifying the conditions under which the expansion of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the Rocky Mountain West triggered a political conflict between ranching and energy stakeholder groups. Through scrutiny of federal actions and policies implemented by the Executive Branch between 2004 and 2010, the book sheds light on the emphasis of domestic energy production during this time period, and how the traditional ranching and energy alliance was split by shifting policy interests. The book is meant for policy makers, natural resource agencies, and students and researchers engaged in political science, public administration, and natural resource management. Chapter 1 introduces readers to the case study at hand, and reviews literature on public land agencies and policies. Chapter 2 summarizes the legal history of public land management by the federal government, and the conditions that caused the BLM to favor energy development over ranching in the mid-2000's. Chapter 3 details the role of the Executive Branch (Bush-Cheney administration) in affecting the BLM's domestic energy policies and resource allocation, and chapter 4 analyzes the role of subgovernments in affecting the BLM's motivations too. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 contain first-hand accounts from government officials, state petroleum associations, and ranching supported interest groups to explore the concept of subgovernment stakeholder domination in policymaking, and analyze the similarities and differences between different policy-making elites. Chapter 8 concludes the text by summarizing subgovernment theory, mapping the behaviors of subgovernment actors, and discussing the implications for future political appointees in the direction of land-management agencies like the BLM.

Altered Landscapes

Altered Landscapes
Author: John Pfahl
Publisher:
Total Pages: 56
Release: 1981
Genre: Landscape photography
ISBN: 9780933286290

Habitat

Habitat
Author: Tom Hegen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2018-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9783735605023

The work of photographer Tom Hegen (b. 1991) deals with human interventions in natural habitats.His photographs document the strong impact human beings' have on our environment and show how we have altered our landscape through our actions.Including many impressive aerial photos, this photo book invites viewers to discover their environment from a new perspective, to comprehend the scale of human interventions on our earth's surface, and, ultimately, to assume responsibility.English and German text.

Landscape Ecology in Asian Cultures

Landscape Ecology in Asian Cultures
Author: Sun-Kee Hong
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2010-12-25
Genre: Science
ISBN: 4431877991

Cultural landscapes are a product of the interactions between humans and natural settings. They are landscapes and seascapes that are shaped by human history and land use. Socioeconomic processes especially, but also environmental changes and natural disturbances, are some of the forces that make up landscape dynamics. To understand and manage such complex landscapes, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches are necessary, emphasizing the integration of natural and social sciences and considering multiple landscape functions. The spatial patterns of Asian landscapes are strongly related to human activities and their impacts. Anthropogenic patterns and processes have created numerous traditional cultural landscapes throughout the region, and understanding them requires indigenous knowledge. Cultural landscape ecology from a uniquely Asian perspective is explored in this book, as are the management of landscapes and land-use policies. Human-dominated landscapes with long traditions, such as those described herein, provide useful information for all ecologists, not only in Asia, to better understand the human–environmental relationship and landscape sustainability.

Measuring Wellbeing: Towards Sustainability?

Measuring Wellbeing: Towards Sustainability?
Author: Karen Scott
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-07-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 113628754X

Improving wellbeing and sustainability are central goals of government, but are they in conflict? This engaging new book reviews that question and its implications for public policy through a focus on indicators. It highlights tensions on the one hand between various constructs of wellbeing and sustainable development, and on the other between current individual and societal notions of wellbeing. It recommends a clearer conceptual framework for policy makers regarding different wellbeing constructs which would facilitate more transparent discussions. Arguing against a win-win scenario of wellbeing and sustainability, it advocates an approach based on recognising and valuing conflicting views where notions of participation and power are central to discussions. Measuring Wellbeing is divided into two parts. The first part provides a critical review of the field, drawing widely on international research but contextualised within recent UK wellbeing policy discourses. The second part embeds the theory in a case study based on the author’s own experience of trying to develop quality of life indicators within a local authority, against the backdrop of increasing national policy interest in measuring ‘happiness’. This accessible and informative book, covering uniquely both practice and theory, will be of great appeal to students, academics and policy makers interested in wellbeing, sustainable development, indicators, public policy, community participation, power and discourse.

How the Obama Presidency Changed the Political Landscape

How the Obama Presidency Changed the Political Landscape
Author: Larry J. Walker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2017-06-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1440852065

Covering key issues ranging from education to political mobilization to racial stratification, this book provides a comprehensive examination of the Obama Presidency. President Barack Obama's election and subsequent reelection represent a critical paradigm shift in American political history. But are there lasting effects of the election of an African American to the highest office in the land in terms of the United States' economic, educational, political and social realities? A valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, state and federal policymakers, and general readers, this book poses critical questions and offers insightful answers from expert contributors, provides a balanced critique of President Obama's accomplishments and challenges, and considers the national and international impact President Obama's tenure had on politics. The numerous contributors to this book provide a range of perspectives on President Obama's presidency that question conventional thinking, covering key issues that include health care, education, political mobilization, gender, racial stratification, voting patterns, and criminal justice. Readers will come away with a heightened comprehension of the complex relationships between political structures, economic policies, and minority interests; how Congress, traditional and contemporary activists, and domestic and international issues all shaped the Obama Presidency; and how micro and macro issues such as voting rights, voting patterns, and Get Out the Vote (GOTV) initiatives are connected.

National Climate Policy

National Climate Policy
Author: Elin Lerum Boasson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2014-10-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317668294

Failed attempts at producing ambitious global climate commitments and instruments have made it increasingly important for nation states to deliver climate policies. This in turn requires a better understanding of national climate policymaking. In this book, Elin Lerum Boasson develops an innovative and well-grounded analytical framework for assessing national climate-policy development. Why do national climate policies emerge and change? This question is underpinned by the role played by different actors and the kind social mechanism at work. Boasson asks, to what extent and how is the emergence and change of climate policy influenced by: politicians and the national political fields; business and organizational fields; EU policy and the European environment; social and entrepreneurial mechanisms? Combining policy studies with sociological new institutionalism, and drawing on three climate policy sub-areas in Norway: renewable energy, low-energy buildings and carbon capture and storage, Boasson presents a multi-field framework that allows the reader to capture the entire policy cycle, explaining policy initiation, policy adoption and the long-term, social feedback effects resulting from implementation (or lack of implementation).

Language Policies in Education

Language Policies in Education
Author: James W. Tollefson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2013
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0415894581

This new edition of takes a fresh look at enduring questions at the heart of fundamental debates about the role of schools in society, the links between education and employment, and conflicts between linguistic minorities and "mainstream" populations.

Ourselves and Our Posterity

Ourselves and Our Posterity
Author: Bradley C. S. Watson
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2009-06-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 073913633X

Arguments over constitutional interpretation increasingly highlight the full range of political, moral, and cultural fault lines in American society. Yet all the contending parties claim fealty to the Constitution. This volume brings together some of America's leading scholars of constitutional originalism to reflect on the nature and significance of various approaches to constitutional interpretation and controversies. Throughout the book, the contributors highlight the moral and political dimensions of constitutional interpretation. In doing so, they bring constitutional interpretation and its attendant disputes down from the clouds, showing their relationship to the concerns of the citizen. In addition to matters of interpretation, the book deals with the proper role of the judiciary in a free society, the relationship of law to politics, and the relationship of constitutional originalism to the deepest concerns of political thought and philosophy.

Scaling Up

Scaling Up
Author: Sean Markey
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2016-02-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 177199021X

When citizens take collaborative action to meet the needs of their community, they are participating in the social economy. Co-operatives, community-based social services, local non-profit organizations, and charitable foundations are all examples of social economies that emphasize mutual benefit rather than the accumulation of profit. While such groups often participate in market-based activities to achieve their goals, they also pose an alternative to the capitalist market economy. Contributors to Scaling Up investigated innovative social economies in British Columbia and Alberta and discovered that achieving a social good through collective, grassroots enterprise resulted in a sustainable way of satisfying human needs that was also, by extension, environmentally responsible. As these case studies illustrate, organizations that are capable of harnessing the power of a social economy generally demonstrate a commitment to three outcomes: greater social justice, financial self-sufficiency, and environmental sustainability. Within the matrix of these three allied principles lie new strategic directions for the politics of sustainability. Whether they were examining attainable and affordable housing initiatives, co-operative approaches to the provision of social services, local credit unions, farmers’ markets, or community-owned power companies, the contributors found social economies providing solutions based on reciprocity and an understanding of how parts function within the whole—an understanding that is essential to sustainability. In these locally defined and controlled, democratically operated organizations we see possibilities for a more human economy that is capable of transforming the very social and technical systems that make our current way of life unsustainable.