Urban Cascadia and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice

Urban Cascadia and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice
Author: Nik Janos
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2021-10-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0295749377

In Portland’s harbor, environmental justice groups challenge the EPA for a more thorough cleanup of the Willamette River. Near Olympia, the Puyallup assert their tribal sovereignty and treaty rights to fish. Seattle housing activists demand that Amazon pay to address the affordability crisis it helped create. Urban Cascadia, the infrastructure, social networks, built environments, and non-human animals and plants that are interconnected in the increasingly urbanized bioregion that surrounds Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, enjoys a reputation for progressive ambitions and forward-thinking green urbanism. Yet legacies of settler colonialism and environmental inequalities contradict these ambitions, even as people strive to achieve those progressive ideals. In this edited volume, historians, geographers, urbanists, and other scholars critically examine these contradictions to better understand the capitalist urbanization of nature, the creation of social and environmental inequalities, and the movements to fight for social and environmental justice. Neither a story of green disillusion nor one of green boosterism, Urban Cascadia and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice reveals how the region can address broader issues of environmental justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and the politics of environmental change.

Science for Environmental Protection

Science for Environmental Protection
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2012-12-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0309264898

In anticipation of future environmental science and engineering challenges and technologic advances, EPA asked the National Research Council (NRC) to assess the overall capabilities of the agency to develop, obtain, and use the best available scientific and technologic information and tools to meet persistent, emerging, and future mission challenges and opportunities. Although the committee cannot predict with certainty what new environmental problems EPA will face in the next 10 years or more, it worked to identify some of the common drivers and common characteristics of problems that are likely to occur. Tensions inherent to the structure of EPA's work contribute to the current and persistent challenges faced by the agency, and meeting those challenges will require development of leading-edge scientific methods, tools, and technologies, and a more deliberate approach to systems thinking and interdisciplinary science. Science for Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead outlines a framework for building science for environmental protection in the 21st century and identified key areas where enhanced leadership and capacity can strengthen the agency's abilities to address current and emerging environmental challenges as well as take advantage of new tools and technologies to address them. The foundation of EPA science is strong, but the agency needs to continue to address numerous present and future challenges if it is to maintain its science leadership and meet its expanding mandates.

Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century

Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 125
Release: 2019-03-08
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309476550

Environmental engineers support the well-being of people and the planet in areas where the two intersect. Over the decades the field has improved countless lives through innovative systems for delivering water, treating waste, and preventing and remediating pollution in air, water, and soil. These achievements are a testament to the multidisciplinary, pragmatic, systems-oriented approach that characterizes environmental engineering. Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century: Addressing Grand Challenges outlines the crucial role for environmental engineers in this period of dramatic growth and change. The report identifies five pressing challenges of the 21st century that environmental engineers are uniquely poised to help advance: sustainably supply food, water, and energy; curb climate change and adapt to its impacts; design a future without pollution and waste; create efficient, healthy, resilient cities; and foster informed decisions and actions.

Environmental Studies Division

Environmental Studies Division
Author: United States. Environmental Protection Agency. Washington Environmental Research Center
Publisher:
Total Pages: 52
Release: 1973
Genre: Environmental protection
ISBN:

Grand Challenges in Environmental Sciences

Grand Challenges in Environmental Sciences
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 107
Release: 2001-05-24
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0309072549

Scientists have long sought to unravel the fundamental mysteries of the land, life, water, and air that surround us. But as the consequences of humanity's impact on the planet become increasingly evident, governments are realizing the critical importance of understanding these environmental systemsâ€"and investing billions of dollars in research to do so. To identify high-priority environmental science projects, Grand Challenges in Environmental Sciences explores the most important areas of research for the next generation. The book's goal is not to list the world's biggest environmental problems. Rather it is to determine areas of opportunity thatâ€"with a concerted investmentâ€"could yield significant new findings. Nominations for environmental science's "grand" challenges were solicited from thousands of scientists worldwide. Based on their responses, eight major areas of focus were identifiedâ€"areas that offer the potential for a major scientific breakthrough of practical importance to humankind, and that are feasible if given major new funding. The book further pinpoints four areas for immediate action and investment.

Global Im-Possibilities

Global Im-Possibilities
Author: Phoebe Godfrey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2021-07-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 178699951X

At a time when environmental and social stakes are at their highest – with rising crises and contradictions at the nexus of a building sense of environmental and social collapse – there are no easy solutions. Global Im-Possibilities explores just what can be done around the world to ameliorate this dynamic. Using a range of essays and a multitude of case studies, this book explores what new lessons can be learned from examining the challenges and impediments to achieving just sustainabilities on the levels of policy, planning, and practice, and considers how these challenges and impediments can be addressed by individuals and/or governments. Taking a nuanced approach to provide an intersectional analysis of a particular issue relating to the ideals for achieving sustainability, this book asserts that that it is only in recognizing such complexity that we can hope to achieve just sustainabilities.

Plants for Environmental Studies

Plants for Environmental Studies
Author: Wuncheng (Woodrow) Wang
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2020-02-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9781420048711

One of the problems of using plants in environmental studies is finding current information. Because plants play a key role in environmental studies, from the greenhouse effect to environmental toxicological studies, information is widely scattered over many different fields and in many different sources. Plants for Environmental Studies solves that problem with a single, comprehensive source of information on the many ways plants are used in environmental studies. Written by experts from around the world and edited by a team of prominent environmental specialists, this book is the only source of complete information on environmental impacts, mutation, statistical analyses, relationships between plants and water, algae, plants in ecological risk assessment, compound accumulations, and more. Encompassing algae and vascular plants in both aquatic and terrestrial environments, this book contains a diverse collection of laboratory and in situ studies, methods, and procedures using plants to evaluate air, water, wastewater, sediment, and soil.

Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making

Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2008-11-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0309134412

Federal agencies have taken steps to include the public in a wide range of environmental decisions. Although some form of public participation is often required by law, agencies usually have broad discretion about the extent of that involvement. Approaches vary widely, from holding public information-gathering meetings to forming advisory groups to actively including citizens in making and implementing decisions. Proponents of public participation argue that those who must live with the outcome of an environmental decision should have some influence on it. Critics maintain that public participation slows decision making and can lower its quality by including people unfamiliar with the science involved. This book concludes that, when done correctly, public participation improves the quality of federal agencies' decisions about the environment. Well-managed public involvement also increases the legitimacy of decisions in the eyes of those affected by them, which makes it more likely that the decisions will be implemented effectively. This book recommends that agencies recognize public participation as valuable to their objectives, not just as a formality required by the law. It details principles and approaches agencies can use to successfully involve the public.

Exposure Science in the 21st Century

Exposure Science in the 21st Century
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2012-10-28
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0309264685

From the use of personal products to our consumption of food, water, and air, people are exposed to a wide array of agents each day-many with the potential to affect health. Exposure Science in the 21st Century: A Vision and A Strategy investigates the contact of humans or other organisms with those agents (that is, chemical, physical, and biologic stressors) and their fate in living systems. The concept of exposure science has been instrumental in helping us understand how stressors affect human and ecosystem health, and in efforts to prevent or reduce contact with harmful stressors. In this way exposure science has played an integral role in many areas of environmental health, and can help meet growing needs in environmental regulation, urban and ecosystem planning, and disaster management. Exposure Science in the 21st Century: A Vision and A Strategy explains that there are increasing demands for exposure science information, for example to meet needs for data on the thousands of chemicals introduced into the market each year, and to better understand the health effects of prolonged low-level exposure to stressors. Recent advances in tools and technologies-including sensor systems, analytic methods, molecular technologies, computational tools, and bioinformatics-have provided the potential for more accurate and comprehensive exposure science data than ever before. This report also provides a roadmap to take advantage of the technologic innovations and strategic collaborations to move exposure science into the future.

Humans in the Landscape

Humans in the Landscape
Author: Kai N. Lee
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 8
Release: 2012-09-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0393930726

This is the first textbook to fully synthesize all key disciplines of environmental studies. Humans in the Landscape draws on the biophysical sciences, social sciences, and humanities to explore the interactions between cultures and environments over time, and discusses classic environmental problems in the context of the overarching conflicts and frameworks that motivate them.