الصفحة 14
الصفحة 14
Financial management and risk analysis strategies for business sustainability
Financial Management and Risk Analysis Strategies for Business Sustainability proposes a series of practical and theoretical perspectives on how the business world has to evolve to adapt to the new situation the world has reached due to undeniable climate change forcing businesses to redefine their productive processes and internal organization. Topics highlighted include financial management procedures, corporate social responsibility, risk analysis, financial literacy, and innovation in sustainability and sustainable development. areas.
Field Measurements for Forest Carbon Monitoring : A Landscape-Scale Approach
This volume is a comprehensive guide to the methods and techniques employed in forest carbon inventory and monitoring. Since forest carbon research is interdisciplinary, it is unlikely that any one investigator will possess expertise in all of the types of measurements needed to conduct forest carbon research at scales larger than a forest stand. Techniques used to characterize standing stocks of carbon in a forest, measure key carbon fluxes, and collect related data (such as forest canopy nitrogen concentrations and meteorological measurements) that are required to drive process models, develop predictive relationships, and link to remote sensing data are described in detail. In addition to the measurement methods, the chapters include background information, necessary calculations, and equipment requirements.
Farewell to the Internal Clock : A contribution in the field of chronobiology
Nearly everything making up what we call the “environment” of a plant has an infuence on the way it grows. Sunlight, te- perature, moisture contents of soil and atmosphere and vib- tions are all obvious examples of environmental components, and transient variations in their amount or intensity lead the plant to manifest more or less immediate responses. Small changes in carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere can even have effects, but these take a longer time to be registered – at least those that are visible, albeit at the microscopic level. Plants meet the challenges of the environment by means of acclimation. In this respect, plants are notable for the pl- ticity of their development. However, where morphological or physiological plasticity is no longer an option, the responses would be by means of adaptations as a result of genetic - lection or genetic “assimilation” (Waddington 1957).
Famine Early Warning Systems and Remote Sensing Data
This book describes the interdisciplinary work of USAID’s Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) and its in uence on how food security crises are identi ed, documented and the kind of responses that result. The book describes FEWS NET’s systems and methods for using satellite remote sensing to identify and describe how biophysical hazards impact the lives and livelihoods of the po- lation where they occur. It presents several illustrative case studies that will dem- strate the integration of both physical and social science disciplines in its work. FEWS NET’s operational needs have driven science in biophysical remote sensing applications through its collaboration with the US Geological Survey, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and US Department of Agriculture, as well as methodologies in the social science domain through its support of the US Agency for International - velopment, UN World Food Program and numerous international non-governmental organizations such as Save the Children, Oxfam and others. Because FEWS NET is an organization that must provide a global picture of food insecurity to decision makers, the information it relies on are by necessity - servable and able to be documented.
Fallibility at Work : Rethinking Excellence and Error in Organizations
This book addresses how organizations can deal with human fallibility in order to create space for excellence at work. Some mistakes in work settings put lives at risk, while others create openings for innovative breakthroughs. In order to deal constructively with fallibility, an organization needs a communication climate where it is normal to voice opinions, admit mistakes, and ask for help in critical situations. The book builds on interviews with practitioners in healthcare, aviation, IT, public governance, and industry. It connects narratives from these fields with theories from organizational psychology and philosophy, as well as from positive organizational scholarship. In the final chapter, an overall ethics of fallibility at work is outlined. Fallibility at Work contributes to research in multiple academic disciplines, but also reaches out to practitioners who are interested in the connections between error and excellence in organizations.
Extreme Weather Events and Public Health Responses
In February 2004, the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the European Environment Agency organized an expert meeting to exchange information and develop recommendations on public health and environmental responses to weather and climate extremes, floods, heat-waves and cold spells. The meeting was kindly hosted by the Ministry of Health of Slovakia. The meeting recommendations were adopted at the Fourth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health, Budapest, Hungary, 2004.
Extreme Man-Made and Natural Hazards in Dynamics of Structures
The present threat of the terrorist attacks or accidental explosions, the climate change which brings strong stormy winds or yet the destructive earthquake motion that occurs in previously inactive regions or brings about tsunamis, are a few examples of the kind of applications we seek to address in this work.
Evolutionary Stasis and Change in the Dominican Republic Neogene
In practice, however, science is no less susceptible to fads, culture shifts, and pendulum swings than any other realm of human endeavor. This is an especially important feature of science to keep in mind in the present climate of shrinking government funding (at least in prop- tion to the demand) and the resulting susceptibility of individual scientists and entire disciplines to being influenced by the changing priorities of funding agencies (even if, as such agencies maintain, those priorities come ultimately “from the c- munity”). The present volume is in several important respects a testimonial to both the threats and opportunities that such scientific culture swings pose, both for the individual researcher and a wider field. When scientific research in the Dominican Republic Neogene began more than a century ago, paleontology was an essentially descriptive discipline, focused mainly on finding, describing, and documenting the taxa represented in the fossil record, and (especially in invertebrate paleontology) on using these taxa for bi- tratigraphic correlation.
Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development
The following sections focus on evaluation of climate change projects and policies as they link to development, from the perspective of international organisations, NGO’s, multilateral and bilateral aid agencies, and academia. The authors share methodologies or approaches used to better understand problems and assess interventions, strategies and policies. They also share challenges encountered, what was done to solve these and lessons learned from evaluations. Collectively, the authors illustrate the importance of evaluation in providing evidence to guide policy change to informed decision-making.
European water law and hydropolitics : An inquiry into the resilience of transboundary water governance in the European Union
provides the first comprehensive assessment of the various issues faced by countries in the European Union, where progressing climate change and urbanization pose significant cooperative challenges in a large number of river basins. Conducting a thorough analysis of the intricate web of EU water governance, it reveals that the hydropolitical stability of the European Union is already at risk. Further, given the structural nature of the shortcomings in EU water policy—e.g. the rigidity of the EU’s founding treaties or the institutional complacency of the European Commission— argues that these risks are likely to turn into sources of prolonged conflict, unless EU decision-making bodies take steps to address the new hydrological realities early on.
European Large Lakes Ecosystem changes and their ecological and socioeconomic impacts
Large lakes offer socio-economic benefits and can be used in many ways, and are often areas in which economic, cultural and political interests overlap. In this book the problems regarding the present status of European large lakes and the directions of change are discussed. Threats caused by direct human impact and by climate change, protection needs and restoration measures are considered.
Environmental Simulation Chambers : Application to Atmospheric Chemical Processes
Atmospheric pollution has many different detrimental impacts on air quality at urban, regional and global scales. Large volume photoreactors (often referred to as smog or simulation chambers) have been used very effectively to investigate and understand many varied aspects of atmospheric chemistry related to air pollution problems. Photochemical smog formation, which was first observed around 1945 in Los Angeles, is now a major environmental problem for all industrialised and densely populated regions of the world. Over the years many different modelling and experimental tools have been developed to analyse and simulate the complex chemical processes associated with tropspheric photooxidant formation. Work in environmental chambers has played a key role in the development of our understanding of the atmospheric chemistry associated with pollution problems on local, regional and global scales.
Environmental Security and Sustainable Land Use - with special reference to Central Asia
This book presents important aspects of environmental security and sustainable land use in general and in particular for Central Asia, i.e. the environmental consequences of climate change; sustainable land use and regional development; sustainable development in mountain and steppe regions; beyond borders: Transboundary Biosphere Reserve "Altai" as an approach for regional development; landscape planning as an integrative tool for sustainable development; challenges and threats for environmental stability in Central Asia. A final recommendation in the area of sustainable development and land use as well as the proceeding efforts towards the establishment of the Transboundary Biosphere Reserve "Altai" and the implementation of landscape planning were set in the book as some of the main results of the meeting.
Environmental Problems of Central Asia and their Economic, Social and Security Impacts
entral Asia is a developing region with great potential, but there are valid concerns that current resource management practices are not sustainable, particularly with regard to the management of water resources. Recent changes in social structures, accompanied by regional climate change, have caused substantial environmental changes leading to security concerns in the region. As a result, the local economy has been significantly impacted to the extent that the potential for social unrest is of great concern.
Environmental History of the Rhine-Meuse Delta : An ecological story on evolving human–environmental relations coping with climate change and sea-level rise
This book presents the environmental history of the Delta of the lowland rivers Rhine and Meuse, an ecological story on evolving human–environmental relations coping with climate change and sea-level rise. It offers a combination of in-depth ecology and environmental history, dealing with exploitation of land and water, the use of everything nature provided, the development of fisheries and agriculture, changes in biodiversity of higher plants, fish, birds, mammals and invasive exotics. It is the first comprehensive book written in English on the integrated environmental history of the Delta, from prehistoric times up to the present day. It covers the l- acy of human intervention, the inescapable fate of reclaimed, nevertheless subs- ing and sinking polders, ‘bathtubs’ attacked by numerous floods, reclaimed in the Middle Ages and unwittingly exposed to the rising sea level and the increasing amplitude between high and low water in the rivers. The river channels, constricted and regulated between embankments, lost their flood plains, silted up, degraded and incised. Cultivation of raised bog deposits led to oxidation and compacting of peat and clay, resulting in progressive subsidence and flooding; arable land had to be changed into grassland and wetland. For millennia muscular strength and wind and water powers moulded the country into its basic form. From 1800 onwards, acceleration and scaling up by steam power and electricity, and exponential popu- tion growth, resulted in the erection of human structures ‘fixed forever’, and severe pressure on the environment.
Environmental Governance in Latin America
The multiple purposes of nature – livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists – have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.
Environmental Crises
This book studies the art and science of analyzing, assessing and anticipating environmental change. Among the issues considered are the observational evidence, statistical analysis and dynamic modeling as well as visioning of not-implausible changes in the environment, the changing public perception of the environment, functions of the environment and its use. Coverage also reviews a series of four prominent cases, namely climate change, the emissions of gasoline lead into the atmosphere and water bodies, fisheries policies and the management of marine oil pollution.
Energy transition and energy democracy in East Asia
Provides down-to-earth information on what kind of actions are being taken by the Government, Local community, Businesses, Researchers, NGOs on the energy transition in this region. It gives an updated picture of the energy transition in the East Asian countries, where the economic growth, as well as CO2 emission growth, is significant.
Energy and American Society – Thirteen Myths
This book takes on a central quandary in the study of energy and environmental policy: What myths continue to exist in American culture concerning energy, the environment, and society? It enrolls twenty-four of the nation’s top experts working on energy policy in industry, government laboratories, utilities, nonprofit organizations, and universities to debunk and contextualize thirteen energy myths relating to electric power, renewable energy, energy efficiency, transportation, and climate change. While the book focuses on the American experience, it will be of interest to those working in the fields of energy policy, energy and the environment, and technology assessment worldwide.
Encyclopedia of World Climatology
A successor to the 1986 Encyclopedia of Climatology, this compendium provides a clear explanation of current knowledge and research directions in modern climatology.
