Download or read book From Assessing to Conserving Biodiversity written by Elena Casetta and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-17 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book features essays written by philosophers, biologists, ecologists and conservation scientists facing the current biodiversity crisis. Despite increasing communication, accelerating policy and management responses, and notwithstanding improving ecosystem assessment and endangered species knowledge, conserving biodiversity continues to be more a concern than an accomplished task. Why is it so?The overexploitation of natural resources by our species is a frequently recognised factor, while the short-term economic interests of governments and stakeholders typically clash with the burdens that implementing conservation actions imply. But this is not the whole story. This book develops a different perspective on the problem by exploring the conceptual challenges and practical defiance posed by conserving biodiversity, namely: on the one hand, the difficulties in defining what biodiversity is and characterizing that “thing” to which the word ‘biodiversity’ refers to; on the other hand, the reasons why assessing biodiversity and putting in place effective conservation actions is arduous.

Download or read book Biodiversity Erosion written by Christian Lévêque and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-08-19 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The erosion of biodiversity is currently highly publicized. Militant movements accuse humans of destroying nature and being responsible for a sixth mass extinction. However, this anxiety-provoking message is sometimes based on misconceptions, false or partisan ideas, and media relays that favor and amplify alarmist information. If the situation of certain populations is worrying, it is not a general phenomenon because others are expanding. Rather than holding a globalizing discourse, it is necessary to recontextualize and relativize the debate to better define the necessary actions. Biodiversity Erosion analyzes numerous scientific publications, as well as alarming discussions, emphasizing the multiple biases present in the way information is presented. This book questions the relevance of the notion of species and the desire to compile an inventory of all living things. It argues for a less Manichean approach to our relationship with nature.

Download or read book The Urban Garden City written by Sandrine Glatron and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-24 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an interdisciplinary overview of the role of gardens in cities throughout different historical periods. It shows that, thanks to various forms of spatial and social organisation, gardens are part of the material urban landscape, biodiversity, symbolic and social shape, and assets of our cities, and are increasingly becoming valued as an ‘order’ to follow. Gardens have long been part of the development of cities, serving different purposes through the ages: shaping neighborhoods to promote health or hygiene, introducing aesthetic or biological elements, gathering the citizens around a social purpose, and providing food and diversity in times of crisis. Highlighting examples that can serve as the basis for comparisons, the chapters offer a brief panorama of experiences and models of gardens in the city – in the European context and in various periods of history – while also discussing issues related to garden cities, urban agriculture and community gardens. The contributors are university staff from various disciplines in the human and life sciences, in discourse with other academics but also with practitioners who are interested in experiences with urban gardens and in promoting an awareness of their spatial, social and ‘philosophical’ goals throughout history. The book will appeal to urban geographers, sociologists and historians, but also to urban ecologists dealing with ecosystem services, biodiversity and sustainable development in cities. From a more operational standpoint, landscape planners and architects are sure to find many of the projects enlightening and inspirational.

Download or read book Nature that Makes Us Human written by Michel Loreau and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, resource depletion, new emerging diseases: scientists have raised awareness on the ecological and societal consequences of the unbridled development of human activities for a long time. Why do we keep destroying nature when science makes it clear that in doing so we risk our own destruction? How can we stop destroying our life-support system and reach some kind of harmony between humans and nature? This book seeks to answer these questions. It describes the inability of modern society to fundamentally modify its relationship with nature, instead engaging in collective fictions such as subject-object duality, matter-mind duality, the primacy of rationality, and the superiority of the human species over all other life. Subsequent chapters identify avenues which could allow human societies to break the current deadlock and forge a relationship with the natural world. This path is rooted in a simple observation: humans have a nature that defines them as a unique species beyond their cultural differences, and at the foundation of this nature we share a set of fundamental needs. The expression and satisfaction of these needs provide an opportunity to reconnect humans with nature in all its forms. Nature That Makes Us Human combines recent scientific discoveries in biology and psychology with deep philosophical inquiry--in addition to economic, political, and historical considerations--to understand what motivates us to keep destroying nature today and how we can engage in a new relationship with nature tomorrow. This book is for anyone interested in understanding and overcoming the current ecological crisis.

Download or read book Our Common Cosmos written by Zoë Lehmann Imfeld and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-27 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects an international body of voices, as a timely response to a rapidly advancing field of the natural sciences. The contributors explore how the disciplines of theology, earth and space sciences contribute to the debate on constantly expanding ethical challenges, and the prospect of humanity's future. The discussions offered in this volume see the 'community' as central to a sustainable and ethical approach to earth and space sciences, examining the role of theology in this communal approach, but also recognizing theology itself as part of a community of humanity disciplines. Examining the necessity for interaction between disciplines, this collection draws on voices from biodiversity studies, geology, aesthetics, literature, astrophysics, and others, to illustrate precisely why a constructive and sustainable dialogue is needed within the current scientific climate.

Download or read book Knowledge of Life Today written by Jean Gayon and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-04-10 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knowledge of Life Today presents the thoughts of Jean Gayon, a major philosopher of science in France who is recognized across the Atlantic, especially for his work in philosophy and the history of life sciences. The book is structured around Gayon's personal answers to questions put forward by Victor Petit. This approach combines scientific rigor and risk-taking in answers that go back to the fundamentals of the subject. As well as the relationship between philosophy and the history of science, Gayon discusses the main questions of the history and philosophy of biology that marked his intellectual journey: Darwin, evolutionary biology, genetics and molecular biology, human evolution, and various aspects of the relationship between biology and society in contemporary times (racism, eugenics, biotechnology, biomedicine, etc.).

Download or read book The Coming Authoritarian Ecology written by Fabrice Flipo and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-05-24 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines ecological issues such as climate change and biodiversity, articulating local and global scales, and short and long term perspectives, questioning what "development" and "progress" are. The goal is to show how diverging points of view are conflictingly articulated to one another, in a political ideology perspective. This perspective, which is close to the main actor's point of view, allows displacement of the usual analysis, and offers a new synthesis.

Download or read book Brill s Companion to the Philosophy of Biology written by Andrea Borghini and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Andrea Borghini and Elena Casetta introduce a wide spectrum of key philosophical problems related to life sciences in a neat framework and an accessible style, with a special emphasis on metaphysical issues. The volume is divided into three parts. The first addresses the two main questions stemming from life sciences: what is life, and what is the correct understanding of the theory of evolution? The second part looks at metaphysical questions concerning biological entities: environments, species, organisms, and biological individuals. The third part focuses on theoretical questions of particular ethical and political significance: sex and gender, the biotechnological revolution, and the evolution of behavior and culture. Each chapter is followed by a list of further readings.

Download or read book The Role of Integrity in the Governance of the Commons written by Laura Westra and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-29 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the impact of disintegrity on various aspects of governance, as the disregard of ecological conditions produce grave direct effects to human rights (to water or food) and, indirectly, also to human security in several ways. International legal regimes need to be reconsidered and perhaps re-interpreted, in order to correct these situations that affect the commons today. Some believe that our starting point should acknowledge the impact we already have on the natural world, and accept that we now live in the "anthropocene". Others think that the present emphasis on sustainable development needs to be re-defined. Finally, many believe that reconnecting with moral principles both in professional life and in governance in general represents a necessary first step.

Download or read book Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism written by Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring indigenous life projects in encounters with extractivism, the present open access volume discusses how current turbulences actualise questions of indigeneity, difference and ontological dynamics in the Andes and Amazonia. While studies of extractivism in South America often focus on wider national and international politics, this contribution instead provides ethnographic explorations of indigenous politics, perspectives and worlds, revealing loss and suffering as well as creative strategies to mediate the extralocal. Seeking to avoid conceptual imperialism or the imposition of exogenous categories, the chapters are grounded in the respective authors’ long-standing field research. The authors examine the reactions (from resistance to accommodation), consequences (from anticipation to rubble) and materials (from fossil fuel to water) diversely related to extractivism in rural and urban settings. How can Amerindian strategies to preserve localised communities in extractivist contexts contribute to ways of thinking otherwise?

Download or read book Agroecological Crop Protection written by Jean-Philippe Deguine and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-22 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is devoted to Agroecological Crop Protection, which is the declension of the principles of agroecology to crop protection. It presents the concepts of this innovative approach, case studies and lessons and generic keys for agroecological transition. The book is intended for a wide audience, including scientists, experimenters, teachers, farmers, students. It represents a new tool, proposing concrete keys of action on the basis of feedbacks validated scientifically. Beyond the examples presented, it is therefore of general scope and proposes recommendations for all temperate and tropical cropping systems. It contributes to the training and teaching modules in this field and it is an updated information support for professionals and a teaching aid for students (agronomy, crop protection, biodiversity management, agroecology).

Download or read book The Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethics of Care in Transformative Leadership in Higher Education written by Mary Drinkwater and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-10-17 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethics of Care in Transformative Leadership in Higher Education explores how the use of different ethic of care lenses can be used to nurture and sustain relationships within, between and beyond humans as part of the role and responsibilities of HEIs in addressing local and global crises and change. With contributions from four continents, the handbook brings together multi-contextual perspectives to explore ethics of care in the development of the field. Topics explored include leadership praxis, pedagogy, well-being; cultivating and sustaining relationships within and between institutions; post-human relationships and responsibilities. Countries covered include Australia, Canada, Guyana, South Africa, the UK and the USA. The book forms part of the Bloomsbury Handbooks of Crises and Transformative Leadership in Higher Education collection, brought together by Mary Drinkwater.

Download or read book Coviability of Social and Ecological Systems Reconnecting Mankind to the Biosphere in an Era of Global Change written by Olivier Barrière and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the principle of ‘sustainable development’ which is currently facing a growing environmental crisis. A new mode of thinking and positioning the ecological imperative is the major input of this volume. The prism of co-viability is not the economics of political agencies that carry the ideology of the dominant/conventional economic schools, but rather an opening of innovation perspectives through science. This volume, through its four parts, more than 40 chapters and a hundred authors, gives birth to a paradigm which crystallizes within a concept that will support in overcoming the ecological emergency deadlock.

Download or read book Family Farming and the Worlds to Come written by Jean-Michel Sourisseau and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-11-05 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is family farming? How can it help meet the challenges confronting the world? How can it contribute to a sustainable and more equitable development? Not only is family farming the predominant form of agriculture around the world, especially so in developing countries, it is also the agriculture of the future. By declaring 2014 the “International Year of Family Farming,” the United Nations has placed this form of production at the center of debates on agricultural development. These debates are often reduced to two opposing positions. The first advocates the development of industrial or company agriculture, supposedly efficient because it follows industrial processes for market-oriented mass production. The second promotes the preservation of family farming with its close links between family and farm. The authors of this book wish to enrich the debates by helping overcome stereotypes – which often manifest through the use of terms such as “small-scale farming, subsistence farming, peasant, etc.” Research work has emphatically demonstrated the great adaptability of family farming systems and their ability to meet the major challenges of tomorrow but it has also not overlooked their limitations. The authors explore the choices facing society and possible development trajectories at national and international levels, and the contribution that agriculture will have to make. They call for a recommitment of public policies in favor of family farming in developing countries and stress the importance of planning actions targeted at and tailored to the family character of agricultural models. But, above all, they highlight the need to overcome strictly sectoral rationales, by placing family farming at the core of a broader economic and social project. This book is the result of a collaborative effort led by CIRAD and encapsulates three decades of research on family farming. It will interest researchers, teachers and students, and all those involved in national and international efforts for the development of countries in the South.

Download or read book DARE s Dictionary of Environmental Sciences and Engineering written by A.M.O. Mohamed and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2021-05-30 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideal for anyone interested in environmental issues, this dictionary draws together information from a variety of sources to better facilitate understanding of this wide-ranging subject. Detailed explanations help to promote clearer communication between professionals and provide a standardized reference point for technical translation, a quick-reference guide for researchers and professionals, and an invaluable knowledge base for cross-disciplinary readers from the fields of health, politics, economics and engineering.

Download or read book Biodiversity and Climate Change written by Frank Maes and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ŠToday, climate change is already highly impacting on biodiversity. This adds to existing stress on biodiversity. Current extinction rates are unprecedented in history. This book addresses the many legal issues involved from a variety of perspectives b

Download or read book Biodiversity and Local Ecological Knowledge in France written by Laurence Bérard and published by Editions Quae. This book was released on 2005 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The knowledge of nature held by autochthonous and local communities has been the subject of international talks, notably on biodiversity, but has primarily been studied from an autochthonous angle. French experience of conserving and promoting local know-how, which is the subject of this book, is based on the notions of heritage and of terroirs. This original approach could feed international debate. The book is thus primarily intended for negotiators and political leaders, along with local players who may be interested by the global dimension of such know-how.