Tag: sustainability

The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Managing for Sustainability
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The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Managing for Sustainability

The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Managing for Sustainability
David Waltner-Toews, James J. Kay and Nina-Marie E. Lister (eds.)
New York: Columbia University Pressds
2008, 383 pages.

A copy of The Ecosystem Approach should be placed on the desk of every engineer, manager, environmentalist, politician and teacher. It is one of the first comprehensive efforts to discuss environmental management and sustainability in the interrelated fields of complexity and post-normal science (science where the facts are uncertain, the values are in dispute, the stakes are high and there is a sense of urgency – think climate change)… [Click here to read more!] Continue reading The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Managing for Sustainability

Law, Policy, and Standards

An Introduction to Environmental Law and Policy in Canada and Defending the Environment: Civil Society Strategies to Enforce International Environmental Law

An Introduction to Environmental Law and Policy in Canada
Paul Muldoon, Alastair Lucas, Robert B. Gibson and Peter Pickfield
Toronto: Emond Montgomery Publications Limited
2009, 285 pages.

Defending the Environment: Civil Society Strategies to Enforce International Environmental Law
Linda A. Malone and Scott Pasternack
Washington, DC: Island Press
2006, 359 pages.

An Introduction to Environmental Law and Policy in Canada is the perfect book for university or even high-school students who want to understand the basic language of environmental debate. From an outline of environmental protection regimes to endangered species issues and environmental assessment, this text covers a diverse range of themes, and is marked by clear writing and effective explanations.

Quite literally, this text has something for everyone: Aboriginal jurisdiction, the making of laws, international law, and law enforcement in particular problem areas such as nuclear energy, mining, fisheries and watershed… [Click here to read more!] Continue reading An Introduction to Environmental Law and Policy in Canada and Defending the Environment: Civil Society Strategies to Enforce International Environmental Law

Law, Policy, and Standards

Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World’s Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them and Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators

In Silence of the Songbirds, Bridget Stutchbury, a biology professor at York University, writes clearly and expressively about the dramatic declines of many songbirds. In her words, “By some estimates, we may have already lost almost half of the songbirds that filled the skies only forty years ago.” Continue reading Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World’s Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them and Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators

Law, Policy, and Standards

Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities and Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive

The book uses the example of a bee colony to explain the idea of the city as a complex adaptive system. The “co- intelligence” of the hive sustains the colony, while also adding value to the fields and orchards through pollination. Although it is interesting, the beehive- city analogy wears thin with repetition and becomes tiresome over the course of the book. Continue reading Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities and Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive

Community Stewardship and Living, Energy, Law, Policy, and Standards, Water

Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America

Wood identifies two possible strategies to address our uncertain freshwater future. We can build more dams, reservoirs, river diversions, aqueducts, canals, pipelines, wells, recycling plants and desalination facilities. Alternately, “we can choose how we use what we have now.” The latter, an approach Wood advocates, involves changing the way we manage our watersheds; using ecologically sound appliances and irrigation techniques; and changing our markets, our bookkeeping, and the laws that undervalue this life- giving resource. Continue reading Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America

Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy
Books and Resources, Business and Economics

Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy

Perhaps it is the economic crisis. Maybe it is climate change, soaring extinction rates or the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor. Or then again, it could simply be the nagging sense among more and more people that the human project has somehow gone awry. Whatever the case, in recent years, we have witnessed an explosion of popular interest in books that question, even excoriate, the most fundamental assumptions of our current, growth-at-all-costs economic system. Continue reading Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy