Overcoming Obstacles in Environmental Policymaking

Overcoming Obstacles in Environmental Policymaking
Author: John K. Gamman
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1994-12-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780791422083

This book examines why policies and laws intended to protect the environment often do not work. In particular, Gamman addresses the fundamental reasons why efforts to protect natural resources in the developing world generally fail. He describes why environmental initiatives originating in national governments, international foreign assistance agencies, and environmental groups suffer from a dysfunctional decision making process. And he suggests how to improve environmental policymaking by creating partnerships for sustainable development, showing how to do this with a step-by-step negotiation process.

Environmental Peacemaking

Environmental Peacemaking
Author: Ken Conca
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2002-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801871931

Eight contributions written by professors of political science, government, and politics as well as researchers and program directors for environmental change, energy, and security projects provide insight into the process of environmental peacemaking, based on their experiences in a variety of international regions. An initial chapter makes a case for the process; successive chapters address the Baltic, South Asia, the Aral Sea basin, southern Africa, the Caspian Sea, and the US-Mexican border. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Decision Making for the Environment

Decision Making for the Environment
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2005-07-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309095409

With the growing number, complexity, and importance of environmental problems come demands to include a full range of intellectual disciplines and scholarly traditions to help define and eventually manage such problems more effectively. Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities is the result of a 2-year effort by 12 social and behavioral scientists, scholars, and practitioners. The report sets research priorities for the social and behavioral sciences as they relate to several different kinds of environmental problems.

Global Environmental Change

Global Environmental Change
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 1991-02-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309044944

Global environmental change often seems to be the most carefully examined issue of our time. Yet understanding the human sideâ€"human causes of and responses to environmental changeâ€"has not yet received sustained attention. Global Environmental Change offers a strategy for combining the efforts of natural and social scientists to better understand how our actions influence global change and how global change influences us. The volume is accessible to the nonscientist and provides a wide range of examples and case studies. It explores how the attitudes and actions of individuals, governments, and organizations intertwine to leave their mark on the health of the planet. The book focuses on establishing a framework for this new field of study, identifying problems that must be overcome if we are to deepen our understanding of the human dimensions of global change, presenting conclusions and recommendations.

Material Insurgency

Material Insurgency
Author: Andrew M. Rose
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2021-07-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1438484399

In Material Insurgency, Andrew M. Rose examines emerging new materialist and posthuman conceptions of subjectivity and agency and explores their increasing significance for contemporary climate change environmentalism. Working at the intersection of material ecocriticism, posthuman theory, and environmental political theory, Rose critically focuses on the ways social movement organizing might effectively operate within the context of distributed agency. This concept undoes the privileging of rational human actors to suggest agency is better understood as a complex mixture of human and nonhuman forces. Rose explores various representations of distributed agency, from the pipeline politics of the Keystone XL campaign to the speculative literary fiction of Leslie Marmon Silko and Kim Stanley Robinson. Each of these cultural and literary texts provides a window into the possible constitution of a (distributed) environmental politics that does not yet exist and operates as a resource for envisioning environmental actors we cannot necessarily study empirically, because they are still only a prospect, or potential, of our imagination.

The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It)

The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It)
Author: Charles Saylan
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2011-05-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0520265386

“The hope for the future depends on teaching current and future students the analytical and critical thinking skills for dealing with the most critical problems. My own hope is for this book to be read by everyone, even those outside the field of environmental education. Read this book, read it again, share it widely, and do something - anything - to help our needy and wounded planet."-Marc Bekoff, author of The Animal Manifesto: Six Reasons For Expanding Our Compassion Footprint "Saylan and Blumstein provide a compelling vision of what can be, and what should be, if we have the courage to open our eyes and the boldness to act.”-Peter Saundry, Ph.D., Executive Director of the National Council for Science and the Environment “A clarion call to incorporate environmental education in all grades K-12, across all academic disciplines, in order to produce future generations of environmental stewards."-Mark Gold, President, Heal The Bay "We need a sea change in the educational system. After all, if we can teach schoolchildren that vandalism is wrong, why can we not teach them that environmental destruction is wrong? This book is a haunting call to action. A beautifully written manifesto that gets it right."-Ron Swaisgood, Director of Applied Animal Ecology, Institute for Conservation Research, San Diego Zoo Global “The greatest threat to the future of all species on the planet is the huge gap between what is understood about global climate change by the scientific community and what is known about climate change by the people who need to know -- the public. The sound prescriptions in this book need to be read now. We are running out of time.”-Dr. James Hansen, world-renowned climatologist and author of Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity “Environmental education is a disaster and educating the public on environmental issues is the greatest challenge facing humanity today. This book will help us understand why we are headed toward the collapse of civilization, and more important, how to fix it. Packed with sound science, useful information, and brilliant ideas, it is a book we must read, and give, to our local school boards and principals nationwide. Our children will thank us."-Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb and Humanity on a Tightrope

Successes, Limitations, and Frontiers in Ecosystem Science

Successes, Limitations, and Frontiers in Ecosystem Science
Author: Michael L. Pace
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2013-12-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1461217245

Ecosystem research has emerged in recent decades as a vital, successful, and sometimes controversial approach to environmental science. This book emphasizes the idea that much of the progress in ecosystem research has been driven by the emergence of new environmental problems that could not be addressed by existing approaches. By focusing on successes and limitations of ecosystems studies, the book explores avenues for future ecosystem-level research.

Understanding the Policymaking Process in Developing Countries

Understanding the Policymaking Process in Developing Countries
Author: William Ascher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2017-11-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108278647

Understanding the Policymaking Process in Developing Countries provides a uniquely comprehensive and practical framework for development practitioners, policymakers, activists, and students to diagnose and improve policy processes in developing countries across a wide range of issues. Based on the classic policy sciences approach, the book offers over 100 diagnostic indicators keyed to identify problems of policy processes, policy content, bureaucratic behavior, stakeholder behavior, and national-subnational interactions. This multi-disciplinary framework is applied to a host of policy problems that particularly plague countries experiencing the 'under-development syndrome', including aborted programs and projects, policy impasses, distorted implementation, unnecessary harm and conflict, and shortsighted initiatives. These points are illustrated through cases from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Based on the developing countries' distinctive challenges, the book also offers recommendations on improving policy content and institutions to address the typical limitations.