GEOG 103 - Human Geography: Sustainability

Stories of environmental stewardship in communities from New Orleans to Soweto accompany an interdisciplinary framework for understanding civic ecology as a global phenomenon. In communities across the country and around the world, people are coming together to rebuild and restore local environments that have been affected by crisis or disaster. In New Orleans after Katrina, in New York after Sandy, in Soweto after apartheid, and in any number of postindustrial, depopulated cities, people work together to restore nature, renew communities, and heal themselves. In Civic Ecology, Marianne Krasny and Keith Tidball offer stories of this emerging grassroots environmental stewardship, along with an interdisciplinary framework for understanding and studying it as a growing international phenomenon. Krasny and Tidball draw on research in social capital and collective efficacy, ecosystem services, social learning, governance, social-ecological systems, and other findings in the social and ecological sciences to investigate how people, practices, and communities interact. Along the way, they chronicle local environmental stewards who have undertaken such tasks as beautifying blocks in the Bronx, clearing trash from the Iranian countryside, and working with traumatized veterans to conserve nature and recreate community. Krasny and Tidball argue that humans' innate love of nature and attachment to place compels them to restore nature and places that are threatened, destroyed, or lost. At the same time, they report, nature and community exert a healing and restorative power on their stewards.

Crimes Against Natureprovides a systematic account and analysis of the key concerns of green criminology, written by one of the leading authorities in the field. The book draws upon the disciplines of environmental studies, environmental sociology and environmental management as well as criminology and socio-legal studies, and draws upon a wide range of examples of crimes against the environment - ranging from toxic waste, logging, wildlife smuggling, bio-piracy, the use and transport of ozone depleting substances through to illegal logging and fishing, water pollution and animal abuse. The book is divided into three parts: Part 1 sets out theoretical approaches and perspectives on the subject; Part 2 explores the (national and international) dimensions of environmental crime and the explanations for it; Part 3 deals with the range of responses to environmental crime - environmental law enforcement, regulation, environmental crime prevention and the role of global institutions and movements.

When we think "climate change," we think of man-made global warming, caused by greenhouse gas emissions. But natural climate change has occurred throughout human history, and populations have had to adapt to its vicissitudes. Tony McMichael, a renowned epidemiologist and a pioneer in the fieldof how human health relates to climate change, is the ideal guide to this phenomenon, and in his magisterial Climate Change and the Health of Nations, he presents a sweeping and authoritative analysis of how human societies have been shaped by climate events. Some have theorized that natural environment determines the fate of communities. McMichael does not go that far, but he emphasizes that it does have vast direct and indirect repercussions for human health and welfare. After providing an overview of the dynamics of global warming and the greenhouseeffect, McMichael takes us on a tour of the entirety of human history, through the lens of climate change. From the very beginning of our species some five million years ago, human biology has evolved to adapt to cooling temperatures, new food sources, and changing geography. As societies began toform, they too evolved in relation to their environments, most notably with the development of agriculture eleven thousand years ago. McMichael dubs this mankind's "Faustian bargain," because the prosperity and comfort that an agrarian society provides relies on the assumption that the environmentwill largely remain stable; in order for agriculture to succeed, environmental conditions must be just right, which McMichael refers to as the "Goldilocks phenomenon." Now, with global warming, the bill is coming due-not that it was ever far out of mind. Climate-related upheavals are a common threadrunning through history, and they inevitably lead to conflict and destruction. McMichael correlates them to the four horsemen of the apocalypse: famine, pestilence, war, and conquest. Indeed, they have precipitated food shortages, the spread of infectious diseases, and even civilizational collapse.We can see this in familiar historical events - the barbarian invasions of Rome, the Black Death in medieval Europe, the Irish potato famine, maybe even the Ten Plagues - that had their roots in natural climate change. Why devote so much analysis to the past, when the terrifying future of climate change is already here? The story of mankind's survival in the face of an unpredictable and unstable climate, and of the terrible toll that climate change can take, in fact could not be more important as we face therealities of a warming planet. This sweeping magnum opus is not only a rigorous, innovative, and fascinating exploration of how the climate affects the human condition, but also a clarion call to recognize our species' utter reliance on the earth as it is.

Predicting the shape of our future populations is vital for installing the infrastructure, welfare, and provisions necessary for society to survive. There are many opportunities and challenges that will come with the changes in our populations over the 21st century. In this new addition to the21st Century Challenges series, Sarah Harper works to dispel myths such as the fear of unstoppable global growth resulting in a population explosion, or that climate change will lead to the mass movement of environmental refugees; and instead considers the future shape of our populations in light ofdemographic trends in fertility, mortality, and migration, and their national and global impact.How Population Change Will Transform Our World looks at population trends by region to highlight the key issues facing us in the coming decades, including the demographic inertia in Europe, demographic dividend in Asia, high fertility and mortality in Africa, the youth bulge in the Middle East, andthe balancing act of migration in the Americas. Harper concludes with an analysis of global challenges we must plan for such as the impact of climate change and urbanization, and the difficulty of feeding 10 billion people, and considers ways in which we can prepare for, and mitigate against, thesechallenges.

Hurricane Katrina forced the largest and most abrupt displacement in U.S. history. About 1.5 million people evacuated from the Gulf Coast preceding Katrina's landfall. New Orleans, a city of 500,000, was nearly emptied of life after the hurricane and flooding. Katrina survivors eventually scattered across all fifty states, and tens of thousands still remain displaced. Some are desperate to return to the Gulf Coast but cannot find the means. Others have chosen to make their homes elsewhere. Still others found a way to return home but were unable to stay due to the limited availability of social services, educational opportunities, health care options, and affordable housing. The contributors to Displaced have been following the lives of Katrina evacuees since 2005. In this illuminating book, they offer the first comprehensive analysis of the experiences of the displaced. Drawing on research in thirteen communities in seven states across the country, the contributors describe the struggles that evacuees have faced in securing life-sustaining resources and rebuilding their lives. They also recount the impact that the displaced have had on communities that initially welcomed them and then later experienced "Katrina fatigue" as the ongoing needs of evacuees strained local resources. Displaced reveals that Katrina took a particularly heavy toll on households headed by low-income African American women who lost the support provided by local networks of family and friends. It also shows the resilience and resourcefulness of Katrina evacuees who have built new networks and partnered with community organizations and religious institutions to create new lives in the diaspora.

The theory that human activity is causing the earth to warm is broadly known. Yet while the vast majority of scientists who study the issue think that global warming is both real and dangerous, nations have done very little to halt - much less reverse - the process. The main reason for this isthat crafting policies to reduce global warming presents a serious collective action problem: the threat today seems minor, yet taking it on alone puts nations at a competitive disadvantage with those who simply elide the issue. Moreover, amidst this environment of buck passing, there is a vocalminority that contends that global warming is not even occurring. And there are others who admit that while it might be occurring, it is an entirely manageable threat. In Overheated, Andrew Guzman stresses that a major problem facing proponents of global warming reduction policies is that it remains an abstract issue for most. Yes, it might occur, but ordinary people really do not have a sense of how it will impact their lives. Guzman moves beyond abstractions andspells out the real-world consequences for human societies if we continue on the path that we're presently on: pandemics resulting from escalating urbanization and migration, massive flooding, the impact of rising sea levels on coastlines, and oscillations in food production. Guzman argues that onlyby establishing the increasing likelihood of these sorts of catastrophes can we begin to implement changes in national and international policy. By shifting the discussion away from scientific evidence that has no apparent effect on people's daily lives to global warming's wide-ranging impact onhuman societies, Overheated brings global warming down to earth. In doing so, it forces us to confront the very real ways in which climate change will negatively transform the lives of billions of people if we fail to institute effective policies to mitigate it.

Studies warn that global warming and sea level rise will create hundreds of millions of environmental refugees. While climate change will undoubtedly affect future migration patterns and behavior, the potential outcomes are far more complex than the environmental refugee scenario suggests. This book provides a comprehensive review of how physical and human processes interact to shape migration, using simple diagrams and models to guide the researcher, policy maker, and advanced student through the climate-migration process. The book applies standard concepts and theories used in climate and migration scholarship to explain how events such as Hurricane Katrina, the Dust Bowl, African droughts, and floods in Bangladesh and China have triggered migrations that haven't always fit the environmental refugee storyline. Lessons from past migrations are used to predict how future migration patterns will unfold in the face of sea level rise, food insecurity, and political instability, and to review options for policy makers.