Global Environmental Risk

Hardback  512pp  ISBN 9781853838002      £70.00

Softcover  512pp  ISBN 9781853838019      £25.00

Despite international initiatives such as the Earth Summit in 1992 and ongoing efforts to implement the Kyoto Protocol, human activities continue to register a destructive toll on the planetary environment. At root, research on global environmental risk seeks new pathways for reversing unsustainable trends, curtailing ongoing destructive activities, and creating a life-sustaining planet. This book takes stock of the distinctive challenges posed by global environmental risks, the capacity of knowledge systems to identify and characterize such risks, and the competence of human society to manage the unprecedented complexity. Particular attention trains on engaging, in ways conducive to enhancing social learning and adaptation, the large uncertainties inherent in these risks.

Various chapters enlist different scales of analysis to explore the manifestation and causes of global environmental risks in all the diversity of their regional expression. Throughout, the editors and contributors accord prominence to the vulnerability of people and places to environmental degradation. Understanding vulnerability is a neglected key to assessing the nature of the risks and determining strategies for altering trajectories of threat. Global risk futures, the editors argue, are not intractable, and are still amenable to a risk-analysis enterprise that is democratic in principle, humanistic in concept, and geared to the realities that pertain to the particular societies, locales, and regions that will ultimately bear the risk.

CONTENTS

List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Introduction: Global environmental risk and society
Roger E. Kasperson, Jeanne X Kasperson, and Kirstin Dow, with contributions from Exequiel Ezcurra, Diana M. Liverman, James K. Mitchell, Samuel J. Ratick, Timothy O'Riordan, and Peter Timmerman

Part One CHARACTERIZING GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS

Editors' Introduction

2 International comparisons of environmental hazards
Vicki Norberg-Bohm, William C. Clark, Bhavik Bakshi, Jo Anne Berkenkamp, Sherry A. Bishko, Mark D. Koehler, Jennifer A. Marrs, Chris P. Nielsen, and Ambuj Sagar

3 The risk transition and developing countries
Kirk R. Smith

4 Global risk, uncertainty, and ignorance
Silvio 0. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz

Part Two VULNERABILITY

Editors' Introduction

5 Vulnerability to global environmental change
Diana M. Liverman

6 Vulnerability to global environmental change in natural ecosystems and rural areas: A question of latitude?
Exequiel Ezcurra, Alfonso Valiente-Banuet, Oscar Flores-Villela, and Ella Vdzquez-Dominguez

7 Vulnerability, equity, and global environmental change
Roger E. Kasperson, Jeanne X. Kasperson, and Kirstin Dow

Part Three HIGH-RISK REGIONS

Editors' Introduction

8 Trajectories of threat: Assessing environmental criticality in nine regions
Jeanne X. Kasperson, Roger E. Kasperson, and B. L. Turner, II

9 Global change and environmental risks in mountain ecosystems
N. S. Jodha

10 Vulnerability to drought and climate change in Mexico
Diana M. Liverman

11 Sea-level rise and the Bangladesh and Nile deltas
James M. Broadust

12 Sea-level rise and the North Sea
Timothy O'Riordan

13 Sea-level rise and the Sea of Japan
Saburo Ikeda and Masaaki Kataoka

Part Four GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL FUTURES

Editors' Introduction

14 Risk and imagining alternative futures
Timothy O'Riordan and Peter Tirnmerman

15 Exploring a sustainable future for Canada
John B. Robinson

16 Social visions of future sustainable societies
Patricia Benjamin, Jeanne X. Kasperson, Roger E. Kasperson, Jacque L. Emel, and Dianne E. Rocheleau

References
Contributors
Index

To find similar publications, click on a keyword below:
Earthscan : climate change : environmental impact : environmental protection : environmental science : oceanography : risk assessment : sustainable development