Sustaining Our Natural Resources


Book Description

Natural resources have supported life on Earth for over 3.5 billion years. However, many of the nonliving resources human beings use, including fossil fuels, will run out one day, and resources such as air, water, and soil, are in danger from human activity. Includes information about renewable resources, sustainable development, population growth, energy resources, and ecological footprints.




Sustainable Natural Resource Management


Book Description

Natural resources support all human productivity. The sustainable management of natural resources is among the preeminent problems of the current century. Sustainability and the implied professional responsibility start here. This book uses applied mathematics familiar to undergraduate engineers and scientists to examine natural resource management and its role in framing sustainability. Renewable and nonrenewable resources are covered, along with living and sterile resources. Examples and applications are drawn from petroleum, fisheries, and water resources. Each chapter contains problems illustrating the material. Simple programs in commonly available packages (Excel, MATLAB) support the text. The material is a natural prelude to more advanced study in ecology, conservation, and population dynamics, as well as engineering and science. The mathematical description is kept within what an undergraduate student in the sciences or engineering would normally be expected to master for natural systems. The purpose is to allow students to confront natural resource problems early in their preparation.




Sustaining Natural Resources in a Changing Environment


Book Description

Climate change and environmental degradation have intensified the pressures on crucial resources such as food and water security and air quality. In this collection, academic researchers and practitioners who have lived and worked in countries as geographically and culturally diverse as Brazil, China, India, Ghana, Palestine, Uganda and Venezuela draw on their wide-ranging international and inter-sectoral experience to offer valuable comparative insights into the relationship between research and evidence-based policy for sustaining natural resources. Their contributions provide a novel mix of disciplinary perspectives ranging across geography, ecology, social policy, the political economy, philosophy, international development, engineering technology, architecture and urban planning. They examine the institutions involved in generating and mediating evidence about the sustainability of natural resources in a changing environment, and the different methodologies employed in collecting and assessing evidence, informing policy and contributing to governance. The authors demonstrate not only that social science evidence on governance and policy implementation to sustain natural resources must complement natural science inputs, but also that local communities must be an integral part of any programme development. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Social Science.




Natural Resources


Book Description

Natural resource management refers to the management of the utilization of natural resources like water, land, plants and animals with a focus on ensuring the sustainability of life in the present and in the future. It is also concerned with the management of the interaction between people and natural landscapes. Water management, suitable land utilization planning and biodiversity conservation are generally integrated with industrial activities of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining and tourism, to ensure sustainable management. A change in the hydrological cycles, ecological cycles, climate, plants and geography, etc. has far-reaching and long-term impacts. Natural resource management is achieved through the multiple approaches of top-down, adaptive management, precautionary approach, community-based natural resource management and integrated natural resource management. This book elucidates the concepts and innovative models around prospective developments with respect to natural resource management. It is compiled in such a manner, that it will provide in-depth knowledge about the theories and practices of effective natural resource management. It is a complete source of knowledge on the present status of this important field.




Natural Resources and Sustainable Development


Book Description

There are more than 6 billion people living on Earth today, and the United Nations predicts that this number will surge to 9.1 billion by the year 2050. However, the natural resources necessary to sustain the world's population-including freshwater, arabl




Natural Resource Management for Sustainable Development in the Caribbean


Book Description

At the International Earth Summit convened in Rio de Janeiro in 1994, all nations of the world were mandated to protect the environment for the benefit of present and future generations. This collection introduces the reader to the major issues involved in the management of a number of resources critical to Caribbean development. The chapters discuss the sustainability of water, fisheries and agriculture in the region from a variety of perspectives. Particular emphasis is also given to the use of energy, recreation and coastal resource management and their impact on the fragile ecosystem. The book makes a contribution to the ongoing debate of sustainable environmental management within the region and the world.







Management of Natural Resources, Sustainable Development and Ecological Hazards III


Book Description

This book contains the proceedings of the third in a now-biennial series organized by the Wessex Institute of Technology around the urgent need to determine solutions regarding sustainable development before our planet reaches a point of irreversibility. The aggressive search for new sources of energy and materials, the rapid rate at which natural resources are being consumed, and the destructiveness of the resulting pollution are all having a negative impact on the planet that needs to be stopped, if not reversed. As at the first two, participants at this conference will take stock of our situation and try to facilitate constructive principles and policies for a way forward, something that can only be done by transdisciplinary cooperation. Thus papers will examine ethical, political and social issues, health, safety and risk, lessons from nature, planning and development, and new technologies.




Management of Natural Resources, Sustainable Development and Ecological Hazards


Book Description

The state of our planet continues to deteriorate at an alarming rate. We have arrived at a situation where we need to determine urgent solutions before we reach a point of irreversible deterioration. Much has been written in different contexts about reaching sustainability but the concept itself needs to be defined in the framework of all different disciplines in order to arrive at optimal solutions. Hence this book is essentially trans-disciplinary in order to find appropriate sustainable solutions, involving, collaboration across a wide range of disciplines. Publishing papers from the First International Conference on Management of Natural Resources, Sustainable Development and Ecological Hazards, the book features articles encompassing topic areas such as: Water Resources; Air; Soil; Ecology; Health Risk; Energy; Planning and Development; Political and Social Issues; The Re-Encounter; New Technologies; Learning from Nature; Safety.




Sustainable Management of Natural Resources


Book Description

Nowadays, environmental issues including air and water pollution, climate change, overexploitation of marine ecosystems, exhaustion of fossil resources, conservation of biodiversity are receiving major attention from the public, stakeholders and scholars from the local to the planetary scales. It is now clearly recognized that human activities yield major ecological and envir- mental stresses with irreversible loss of species, destruction of habitat or c- matecatastrophesasthemostdramaticexamplesoftheire?ects.Infact,these anthropogenic activities impact not only the states and dynamics of natural resources and ecosystems but also alter human health, well-being, welfare and economic wealth since these resources are support features for human life. The numerous outputs furnished by nature include direct goods such as food, drugs, energy along with indirect services such as the carbon cycle, the water cycle and pollination, to cite but a few. Hence, the various ecological changes our world is undergoing draw into question our ability to sustain economic production, wealth and the evolution of technology by taking natural systems into account. The concept of “sustainable development” covers such concerns, although no universal consensus exists about this notion. Sustainable development - phasizes the need to organize and control the dynamics and the complex - teractions between man, production activities, and natural resources in order to promote their coexistence and their common evolution. It points out the importance of studying the interfaces between society and nature, and es- ciallythecouplingbetweeneconomicsandecology.Itinducesinterdisciplinary scienti?c research for the assessment, the conservation and the management of natural resources.