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When are transnational networks likely to convince policymakers in developing countries to adopt potentially costly environmental regulations for the good of managing biodiversity? Since most of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found in developing countries, identifying the pathways through which policymakers in these states are incentivized to engage in conservation is critical. This book argues that networks of nonstate experts are most likely to convince policymakers to address an emerging environmental problem if three conditions are met: First, network members must have a scientifically validated consensus about the cause-and-effect relationships and parameters of the problem, since a consensus about the science delegitimizes competing arguments and strengthens the authority of a network’s arguments. Second, networks must build mechanisms for socialization with policymakers in domestic regulatory agencies. Doing so promotes norms of shared ownership and responsibility for knowledge claims about conservation. Third, networks will have to make scientific arguments for conservation consonant with local environmental justice claims by communities residing in and around areas of globally important biodiversity. Networks can do so by arguing for policies that would protect biodiversity in a way that ensures continued, if environmentally sustainable, access for low-income populations that may otherwise be excluded from natural resources. If these three conditions are not met, conservation efforts are likely to face resistance from groups of local actors, policymakers, or both, who cannot reconcile global claims for biodiversity conservation with their immediate demands.

Thousands of synthetic chemicals are used to make our clothing, cosmetics, household products and electronic devices. However, many of these chemicals are hazardous and potentially dangerous to our health and the environment. For fifty years, the conventional approach to hazardous chemicals has focused on regulation, barriers, and control. Today, there is a growing international interest in going beyond a singular focus on toxic and hazardous chemicals and developing broader policies for managing all chemicals. This book proposes a new strategy for chemical management based on changing chemical production and consumption systems. Reviewing the many initiatives now on-going in the product and chemical markets, in industry, and in science, Chemicals without Harm offers a strategy based on characterizing, classifying and prioritizing chemicals, identifying and adopting safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals, and promoting the research and innovation needed to develop those alternatives.

In communities across the country and around the world, people are coming together to rebuild and restore local environments that have been affected by crisis, disinvestment, or disaster. In New Orleans after Katrina, in New York after Sandy, in Soweto after apartheid, and in any number of postindustrial, depopulated cities, people work together to restore nature, renew communities, and heal themselves. In Civic Ecology, Marianne Krasny and Keith Tidball offer stories of this emerging grassroots environmental stewardship, along with an interdisciplinary framework for understanding and studying it as a growing international phenomenon. Krasny and Tidball draw on research in social capital and collective efficacy, ecosystem services, social learning, governance, and social-ecological systems, and other findings in the social and ecological sciences to investigate how people, practices, and communities interact. Along the way, they chronicle local environmental stewards who have undertaken such tasks as beautifying blocks in the Bronx, clearing trash from the Iranian countryside, and working with traumatized veterans to conserve nature and recreate community. Krasny and Tidball argue that humans’ innate love of nature and attachment to place compels them to restore nature and places that are threatened, destroyed, or lost. At the same time, they report, nature and community exert a healing and restorative power on their stewards.

China's carbon dioxide emissions now outstrip those of other countries and its domestic air quality is severely degraded, especially in urban areas. Its sheer size and its growing, fossil-fuel-powered economy mean that China‗s economic and environmental policy choices will have an outsized effect on the global environmental future. Over the last decade, China has pursued policies that target both fossil fuel use and atmospheric emissions, but these efforts have been substantially overwhelmed by the country's increasing energy demands. With a billion citizens still living on less than $4,000 per year, China's energy and environmental policies must be reconciled with the goals of maintaining economic growth and raising living standards. This book offers an integrated analysis of China's economy, emissions, air quality, public health, and agriculture. It first offers essential scientific context and accessible summaries of the book's policy findings; it then provides the underlying scientific and economic research. These studies suggest that China's recent sulfur controls achieved enormous environmental health benefits at unexpectedly low costs. They also indicate that judicious implementation of carbon taxes could reduce not only China's carbon emissions but also its air pollution more comprehensively than current single-pollutant policies, all at little cost to economic growth.

This book explores the relationship between common pool property and resources, and ecological sustainability. The debate between Hardin, who developed the idea of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and Elinor Ostrom who showed commons could be sustainable, is discussed. The enclosure of the commons is examined. The contribution of virtual commons, social sharing to reduce resource use and conservation via commons are all critically discussed. The need to link cultural change, political action and ecological ethics to protect future generations is examined.

This book explores the practical and conceptual implications of the de facto necessity of consensus for development of international environmental law. Juristic democracy emphasizes the role of the citizen rather than the nation-state as the source of legitimacy in international environmental law. It would allow international law to be rooted in local knowledge and grounded in democratic deliberation and consensus. The aim is to construct a global jurisprudence based on collective will formation. Building on concepts presented in two previous books, Deliberative Environmental Politics and Global Democracy and Sustainable Jurisprudence, the authors examine in detail the challenges that consensus poses for a system of juristic democracy. Baber and Bartlett analyze the implications of deliberative consensus for rule-bounded behavior, for the accomplishment of basic governance tasks, and for diversity in a politically divided and culturally plural world. They assess social science findings about the potential of small-group citizen panels to contribute to rationalized consensus, drawing on the extensive research conducted on the use of juries in courts of law. Finally, they analyze the place of juristic democracy in a future “consensually federal” system for earth system governance.

Buildings are the nation's greatest energy consumers. Forty percent of all our energy is used for heating, cooling, lighting, or powering machines and devices in buildings. Despite decades of investment in green construction technologies, residential and commercial buildings remain stubbornly energy inefficient. This book looks beyond the technological and material aspects of green construction to examine the cultural, social, and organizational shifts that sustainable building requires, examining the fundamental challenge to centuries-long traditions in design and construction that green building represents. The chapters consider the changes associated with green building through a sociological and organizational lens. They discuss shifts in professional expertise created by new social concerns about green building, including evolving boundaries of professional jurisdictions; changing industry strategies and structures, including the roles of ownership, supply firms, and market niches; new operational, organizational, and cultural arrangements, including the mainstreaming of environmental concerns; narratives and frames that influence the perception of green building; and future directions for the theory and practice of sustainable construction.

Humans are no longer spectators who need to adapt to their natural environment. Our impact on the earth has caused changes that are outside the range of natural variability and are equivalent to such major geological disruptions as ice ages. Some scientists argue that we have entered a new epoch in planetary history: the Anthropocene. In such an era of planet-wide transformation, we need a new model for planet-wide environmental politics. This book proposes “earth system” governance as just such a new paradigm. It offers both analytical and normative perspectives. It provides detailed analysis of global environmental politics in terms of five dimensions of effective governance: agency, particularly agency beyond that of state actors; architecture of governance, from local to global levels; accountability and legitimacy; equitable allocation of resources; and adaptiveness of governance systems. The book goes on to offer a wide range of policy proposals for future environmental governance and a revitalized United Nations, including the establishment of a World Environment Organization and a UN Sustainable Development Council, new mechanisms for strengthened representation of civil society and scientists in global decision making, innovative systems of qualified majority voting in multilateral negotiations, and novel institutions to protect those impacted by global change.

Ecuador is biologically diverse, petroleum rich, and economically poor. Its extraordinary biodiversity has attracted attention and funding from such transnational environmental organizations as Conservation International, the World Wildlife Fund, and the United States Agency for International Development. In Ecuador itself there are more than 200 environmental groups dedicated to sustainable development, and the country’s 2008 constitution grants rights to nature. The current leftist government is committed both to lifting its people out of poverty and pursuing sustainable development; but petroleum extraction is Ecuador’s leading source of revenue. While extraction generates economic growth, which supports the state’s social welfare agenda, it also causes environmental destruction. Given these competing concerns, will Ecuador be able to achieve sustainability? In this book, Tammy Lewis examines the movement for sustainable development in Ecuador through four eras: movement origins (1978–1987), neoliberal boom (1987–2000), neoliberal bust (2000–2006), and citizens’ revolution (2006–2015). Lewis presents a typology of Ecuador’s environmental organizations: ecoimperialists, transnational environmentalists from other countries; ecodependents, national groups that partner with transnational groups; and ecoresisters, home-grown environmentalists who reject the dominant development paradigm. She examines the interplay of transnational funding, the Ecuadorian environmental movement, and the state’s environmental and development policies. Along the way, addressing literatures in environmental sociology, social movements, and development studies, she explores what configuration of forces—political, economic, and environmental—is most likely to lead to a sustainable balance between the social system and the ecosystem.

Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. This book provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today’s fossil fuel-driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. This book describes humanity’s energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview.