Download or read book New Perspectives in Global Environmental Disasters written by Emerald Group Publishing Limited and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-28 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Perspectives in Global Environmental Disasters is a collection of articles that represent high levels of scholarship in emergent themes and key issues. These include the following: - Crisis management - Emergency planning - Community-based disaster management
Download or read book Coping with Global Environmental Change Disasters and Security written by Hans Günter Brauch and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-02-03 with total page 1816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security - Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks reviews conceptual debates and case studies focusing on disasters and security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks in Europe, the Mediterranean and other regions. It discusses social science concepts of vulnerability and risks, global, regional and national security challenges, global warming, floods, desertification and drought as environmental security challenges, water and food security challenges and vulnerabilities, vulnerability mapping of environmental security challenges and risks, contributions of remote sensing to the recognition of security risks, mainstreaming early warning of conflicts and hazards and provides conceptual and policy conclusions.
Download or read book Natural Disasters in a Global Environment written by Anthony N. Penna and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural Disasters in a Global Environment is a transnational, global and environmental history of natural and man-made disasters. Detailed case studies of past and present events are presented in a historical narrative, making use of the most recent scholarship. Examines a range of disasters including volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, landslides, hurricanes, famines, and more Highlights the role of science in studying natural disasters and describes the mechanisms responsible for them Features a range of case studies which can be used in conjunction with one another or as standalone examples Covers scientific material in a lucid and accessible style suited to undergraduate students or those outside of scientific disciplines Traces the transition of our understanding of disasters, from religious and superstitious explanations to contemporary scientific accounts
Download or read book Unbreakable written by Stephane Hallegatte and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2016-11-24 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Economic losses from natural disasters totaled $92 billion in 2015.' Such statements, all too commonplace, assess the severity of disasters by no other measure than the damage inflicted on buildings, infrastructure, and agricultural production. But $1 in losses does not mean the same thing to a rich person that it does to a poor person; the gravity of a $92 billion loss depends on who experiences it. By focusing on aggregate losses—the traditional approach to disaster risk—we restrict our consideration to how disasters affect those wealthy enough to have assets to lose in the first place, and largely ignore the plight of poor people. This report moves beyond asset and production losses and shifts its attention to how natural disasters affect people’s well-being. Disasters are far greater threats to well-being than traditional estimates suggest. This approach provides a more nuanced view of natural disasters than usual reporting, and a perspective that takes fuller account of poor people’s vulnerabilities. Poor people suffer only a fraction of economic losses caused by disasters, but they bear the brunt of their consequences. Understanding the disproportionate vulnerability of poor people also makes the case for setting new intervention priorities to lessen the impact of natural disasters on the world’s poor, such as expanding financial inclusion, disaster risk and health insurance, social protection and adaptive safety nets, contingent finance and reserve funds, and universal access to early warning systems. Efforts to reduce disaster risk and poverty go hand in hand. Because disasters impoverish so many, disaster risk management is inseparable from poverty reduction policy, and vice versa. As climate change magnifies natural hazards, and because protection infrastructure alone cannot eliminate risk, a more resilient population has never been more critical to breaking the cycle of disaster-induced poverty.
Download or read book Negotiating Environmental Change written by F. Berkhout and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ESRC/GEC programme has made a major contribution in terms of environmental social science research. The chapters in this book provide incisive, detailed and reflective critiques of the development of knowledge over the last ten years and provide powerful and important messages about the challenges presented by the complex relationship between environmental and social change. The book should be essential reading for all researchers and also for all policymakers who are grappling with questions about how to respond to environment/society controversies. Judith Petts, Birmingham University, UK and Member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution Global environmental change will be with us forever. But how it happens in the future, and with what effect on the planet and its peoples depends to a large extent on how the international agreements, national politics and local actions play out. This collection provides the most comprehensive assessment yet of these critical interconnections, and reveals how social scientists are making an invaluable contribution to the creation of more science and just livelihoods in a future world. Tim O Riordan, University of East Anglia, UK An aphrodisiac to the tepid response of positivist social science. People are not merely actors, perpetrators and victims, in an environmental drama. The critical social theorists in this book constructively show us how people are improvising the stage and the script as we update our understanding of nature, what constitutes a good life, and our individual and collective options. Richard B. Norgaard, University of California, Berkeley, US Negotiating Environmental Change is a child of the ESRCs Global Environmental Change Programme, by far the biggest piece of work by social scientists in the United Kingdom during the 1990s. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the balance sheet needs to be drawn up: what do our policies, insights and values owe to the collaborative efforts of social scientists? This book suggests that ideas and approaches that were conceived at a time when the Ozone Hole , Global Warming and Biodiversity Losses were beginning to resonate in academic and policy circles have now entered the British and European psyche. The challenge of forward thinking in the twenty-first century, in which the environment is central to most of the issues that concern social science, is to demonstrate that the environment is not a separate territory . Environmental thinking and practice affects us in various guises: governance and democracy, business and management, risk and everyday consumption: the substance of this book. Negotiating Environmental Change makes clear the contribution that new thinking is making to problems that were not looked upon as environmental a decade ago, but which we now see as being at the forefront of global research and policy agendas. Michael Redclift, King s College London, UK Major advances have been made recently in environmental social science but the context and importance of this research has also changed. Social and natural science studies of the environment have begun to interact more closely with each other and many analysts now agree that an understanding of environmental problems often depends on an understanding of the attitudes and behaviour of people and organisations. Moreover, policy and public debates have also shown that many assumptions that underpin arguments about sustainable development need to be reconsidered and re-framed. This book by leading researchers presents a critical review of debates in environmental social science over the past decade. Three broad areas are covered in ten chapters: the problems of scientific uncertainty and its role in shaping environmental policy and decisions; the development of institutional frameworks for governing natural resources; and the link between economic and technological change and the environment. The book begins with an overview essay exam
Download or read book Environmental Hazards written by Keith Smith and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Topics include : risk assessment, disaster management, adjustment to the hazard (accepting, sharing, reducing loss), earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, snow avalances, storms, biophysical hazards (extreme temperatures, epidemics, frost, wildlifires), floods, droughts, technological hazards (i.e. Bhopal and Chernobyl), etc.
Download or read book The Environment and International Relations written by Kate O'Neill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-06 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition of this exciting textbook introduces students to the ways in which the theories and tools of international relations and other social science disciplines can be used to analyse and address global environmental problems. Kate O'Neill develops an innovative historical and analytical framework for understanding global environmental issues, integrating insights from different disciplines, and she identifies the main actors and their roles, thereby encouraging readers to engage with the issues and equip themselves with the knowledge they need to apply their own critical insights. Revised and updated, the new edition features new figures, examples, textboxes, and a new chapter on the emergence and politics of market mechanisms as a new mode of global environmental governance. The latest developments in the field, including the December 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, along with new perspectives and recent thinking, are incorporated throughout. This will be invaluable for students of environmental issues both from political science and environmental studies perspectives.
Download or read book Climate Change and Natural Disasters written by Vinod Thomas and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The start of the new millennium will be remembered for deadly climate-related disasters—the great floods in Thailand in 2011, Super Storm Sandy in the United States in 2012, and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013, to name a few. In 2014, 17.5 million people were displaced by climate-related disasters, ten times more than the 1.7 million displaced by geophysical hazards. What is causing the increase in natural disasters and what effect does it have on the economy? Climate Change and Natural Disasters sends three messages: human-made factors exert a growing influence on climate-related disasters; because of the link to anthropogenic factors, there is a pressing need for climate mitigation; and prevention, including climate adaptation, ought not to be viewed as a cost to economic growth but as an investment. Ultimately, attention to climate-related disasters, arguably the most tangible manifestation of global warming, may help mobilize broader climate action. It can also be instrumental in transitioning to a path of low-carbon, green growth, improving disaster resilience, improving natural resource use, and caring for the urban environment. Vinod Thomas proposes that economic growth will become sustainable only if governments, political actors, and local communities combine natural disaster prevention and controlling climate change into national growth strategies. When considering all types of capital, particularly human capital, climate action can drive economic growth, rather than hinder it.
Download or read book Confronting Catastrophe written by David Alexander and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current models habitually used to interpret disasters are now decades old and relate to a time when society held markedly different views. The author of this provocative new book, a physical geographer and survivor of a major earthquake in southern Italy (1980), reconceptualizes the story of disaster in terms of present-day trends and tendencies.
Download or read book Environmental Hazards and Disasters written by Bimal Kanti Paul and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental Hazards and Disasters: Contexts, Perspectives and Management focuses on manifested threats to humans and their welfare as a result of natural disasters. The book uses an integrative approach to address socio-cultural, political and physical components of the disaster process. Human and social vulnerability as well as risk to environmental hazards are explored within the comprehensive context of diverse natural hazards and disasters. In addition to scientific explanations of disastrous occurrences, people and governments of hazard-prone countries often have their own interpretations for why natural disasters occur. In such interpretations they often either blame others, in order to conceal their inability to protect themselves, or they blame themselves, attributing the events to either real or imagined misdeeds. The book contains a chapter devoted to the neglected topic of such reactions and explanations. Includes chapters on key topics such as the application of GIS in hazard studies; resiliency; disasters and poverty; climate change and sustainability and development. This book is designed as a primary text for an interdisciplinary course on hazards for upper-level undergraduate and Graduate students. Although not targeted for an introductory hazards course, students in such a course may find it very useful as well. Additionally, emergency managers, planners, and both public and private organizations involved in disaster response, and mitigation could benefit from this book along with hazard researchers. It not only includes traditional and popular hazard topics (e.g., disaster cycles, disaster relief, and risk and vulnerability), it also includes neglected topics, such as the positive impacts of disasters, disaster myths and different accounts of disasters, and disasters and gender.
Download or read book Surviving Sudden Environmental Change written by Jago Cooper and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeologists have long encountered evidence of natural disasters through excavation and stratigraphy. In Surviving Sudden Environmental Change, case studies examine how eight different past human communities—ranging from Arctic to equatorial regions, from tropical rainforests to desert interiors, and from deep prehistory to living memory—faced, and coped with, such dangers. Many disasters originate from a force of nature, such as an earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, volcanic eruption, drought, or flood. But that is only half of the story; decisions of people and their particular cultural lifeways are the rest. Sociocultural factors are essential in understanding risk, impact, resilience, reactions, and recoveries from massive sudden environmental changes. By using deep-time perspectives provided by interdisciplinary approaches, this book provides a rich temporal background to the human experience of environmental hazards and disasters. In addition, each chapter is followed by an abstract summarizing the important implications for today’s management practices and providing recommendations for policy makers. Publication supported in part by the National Science Foundation.
Download or read book Governance for the Environment written by Magali A. Delmas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an era of human-dominated ecosystems in which the demand for environmental governance is rising rapidly. At the same time, confidence in the capacity of governments to meet this demand is waning. How can we address the resultant governance deficit and achieve sustainable development? This book brings together perspectives from economics, management, and political science in order to identify innovative approaches to governance and bring them to bear on environmental issues. The authors' analysis of important cases demonstrates how governance systems need to fit their specific setting and how effective policies can be developed without relying exclusively on government. They argue that the future of environmental policies lies in coordinated systems that simultaneously engage actors located in the public sector, the private sector, and civil society. Governance for the Environment draws attention to cutting-edge questions for practitioners and analysts interested in environmental governance.
Download or read book Natural Disasters and Climate Change written by Stéphane Hallegatte and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores economic concepts related to disaster losses, describes mechanisms that determine the economic consequences of a disaster, and reviews methodologies for making decisions regarding risk management and adaptation. The author addresses the need for better understanding of the consequences of disasters and reviews and analyzes three scientific debates on linkage between disaster risk management and adaptation to climate change. The first involves the existence and magnitude of long-term economic impact of natural disasters on development. The second is the disagreement over whether any development is the proper solution to high vulnerability to disaster risk. The third debate involves the difficulty of drawing connections between natural disasters and climate change and the challenge in managing them through an integrated strategy. The introduction describes economic views of disaster, including direct and indirect costs, output and welfare losses, and use of econometric tools to measure losses. The next section defines disaster risk, delineates between “good” and “bad” risk-taking, and discusses a pathway to balanced growth. A section entitled “Trends in Hazards and the Role of Climate Change” sets scenarios for climate change analysis, discusses statistical and physical models for downscaling global climate scenarios to extreme event scenarios, and considers how to consider extremes of hot and cold, storms, wind, drought and flood. Another section analyzes case studies on hurricanes and the US coastline; sea-level rises and storm surge in Copenhagen; and heavy precipitation in Mumbai. A section on Methodologies for disaster risk management includes a study on cost-benefit analysis of coastal protections in New Orleans, and one on early-warning systems in developing countries. The next section outlines decision-making in disaster risk management, including robust decision-making, No-regret and No-risk strategies; and strategies that reduce time horizons for decision-making. Among the conclusions is the assertion that risk management policies must recognize the benefits of risk-taking and avoid suppressing it entirely. The main message is that a combination of disaster-risk-reduction, resilience-building and adaptation policies can yield large potential gains and synergies.
Download or read book Waiting for the End of the World written by Christopher M. Gerrard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-07 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Waiting for the End of the World? addresses the archaeological, architectural, historical and geological evidence for natural disasters in the Middle Ages between the 11th and 16th centuries. This volume adopts a fresh interdisciplinary approach to explore the many ways in which environmental hazards affected European populations and, in turn, how medieval communities coped and responded to short- and long-term consequences. Three sections, which focus on geotectonic hazards (Part I), severe storms and hydrological hazards (Part II) and biophysical hazards (Part III), draw together 18 papers of the latest research while additional detail is provided in a catalogue of the 20 most significant disasters to have affected Europe during the period. These include earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, storms, floods and outbreaks of infectious diseases. Spanning Europe, from the British Isles to Italy and from the Canary Islands to Cyprus, these contributions will be of interest to earth scientists, geographers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists and climatologists, but are also relevant to students and non-specialist readers interested in medieval archaeology and history, as well as those studying human geography and disaster studies. Despite a different set of beliefs relating to the natural world and protection against environmental hazards, the evidence suggests that medieval communities frequently adopted a surprisingly ‘modern’, well-informed and practically minded outlook.
Download or read book Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South written by Cindy Ermus and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hurricanes, floods, oil spills, disease, and disappearing wetlands are some of the many environmental disasters that impact the Gulf South. The contributors to Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South explore the threat, frequency, and management of this region’s disasters from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Scholars from the fields of history, sociology, and anthropology examine the underlying causes of vulnerability to natural hazards in the coastal states while also suggesting ways to increase resilience. Greg O’Brien considers the New Orleans flood of 1849; Andy Horowitz, the Galveston storm of 1900; and Christopher M. Church, the 1928 hurricane in Florida and the Caribbean. Urmi Engineer Willoughby delves into the turn-of-the-century yellow fever outbreaks in New Orleans and local attempts to eradicate them, while Abraham H. Gibson and Cindy Ermus discuss the human introduction of invasive species and their long-term impact on the region’s ecosystem. Roberto E. Barrios looks at political-ecological susceptibility in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward, and Kevin Fox Gotham treats storm- and flood-defense infrastructures. In his afterword, Ted Steinberg ponders what the future holds when the capitalist state supports an unwinnable battle between land developers and nature. These case studies offer new ways of understanding humans’ interactions with the unique, and at times unforgiving, environment of the Gulf South. These lessons are particularly important as we cope with the effects of climate change and seek to build resilience and reduce vulnerability through enhanced awareness, adequate preparation, and efficient planning.
Download or read book Sustainability and Global Environmental Policy written by Andrew K. Dragun and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 1997 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of contemporary environmental policy. It examines key issues and proposes strategies for environmental problems in the 21st century, and argues that current human activities are not sustainable. It calls for a fundamental change in the way that the environment is perceived.
Download or read book Governance for the Environment written by Magali A. Delmas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the same time, confidence in the capacity of governments to meet this demand is waning.
