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Critical Minerals, the Climate Crisis and the Tech Imperium (Archimedes #65)
by Sophia KalantzakosThis book examines the latest manifestations of resource competition. The energy transition and the digitalization of the global economy are both accelerating even as geopolitics driven by Sino-American hyper-competition become increasingly contentious. The volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, policy makers, institutional stakeholders, and industry experts to analyze not only the transition itself, but also the implications that the need for uninterrupted access to unprecedented levels of raw materials generates. By framing the challenges ahead for global society, governance, industry, international power politics, and the environment, the book asks hard questions about the choices that need to be made to reach net zero by mid-century. Moreover, it sheds light on different facets of the growing risks to what have been global interdependent supply chains in a way that is nuanced, balanced, and practical, thus pushing back on some of the most sensational headlines that breed confusion and may lead policymakers to make more narrow and less effective decisions. The volume is an outcome of “Rich Rocks, the Climate Crisis and the Tech-imperium” a Summer Institute at Caltech and the Huntington that took place in July 2021.
Critical Perspectives on Entrepreneurship: Challenging Dominant Discourses (Routledge Rethinking Entrepreneurship Research)
by Caroline Essers Pascal Dey Deirdre Tedmanson Karen VerduynEntrepreneurship is largely considered to be a positive force, driving venture creation and economic growth. Critical Perspectives on Entrepreneurship questions the accepted norms and dominant assumptions of scholarship on the matter, and reveals how they can actually obscure important questions of identity, ideology and inequality. The book’s distinguished authors and editors explore how entrepreneurship study can privilege certain forms of economic action, whilst labelling other, more collective forms of organization and exchange as problematic. Demystifying the archetypal vision of the white, male entrepreneur, this book gives voice to other entrepreneurial subjectivities and engages with the tensions, paradoxes and ambiguities at the heart of the topic. This challenging collection seeks to further the momentum for alternate analyses of the field, and to promote the growing voice of critical entrepreneurship studies. It is a useful tool for researchers, advanced students and policy-makers.
Critical Perspectives on Food Sovereignty: Global Agrarian Transformations, Volume 2 (Critical Agrarian Studies)
by Marc Edelman, James C. Scott, Amita Baviskar, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Deniz Kandiyoti, Eric Holt-Giménez, Tony Weis, Wendy WolfordThis volume is a pioneering contribution to the study of food politics and critical agrarian studies, where food sovereignty has emerged as a pivotal concept over the past few decades, with a wide variety of social movements, on-the-ground experiments, and policy innovations flying under its broad banner. Despite its large and growing popularity, the history, theoretical foundations, and political program of food sovereignty have only occasionally received in-depth analysis and critical scrutiny. This collection brings together both longstanding scholars in critical agrarian studies, such as Philip McMichael, Bina Agarwal, Henry Bernstein, Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, and Marc Edelman, as well as a dynamic roster of early- and mid-career researchers. The ultimate aim is to advance this important frontier of research and organizing, and put food sovereignty on stronger footing as a mobilizing frame, a policy objective, and a plan of action for the human future.This volume was published as part one of the special double issue celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Journal of Peasant Studies.
Critical Perspectives on Suburban Infrastructures: Contemporary International Cases (Global Suburbanisms)
by Pierre Filion Nina M. PulverMost new urban growth takes place in the suburbs; consequently, infrastructures are in a constant state of playing catch-up, creating repeated infrastructure crises in these peripheries. However, the push to address the tensions stemming from this rapid growth also allow the suburbs to be a major source of urban innovation. Taking a critical social science perspective to identify political, economic, social, and environmental issues related to suburban infrastructures, this book highlights the similarities and differences between suburban infrastructure conditions encountered in the Global North and Global South. Adopting an international approach grounded in case studies from three continents, this book discusses infrastructure issues within different suburban and societal contexts: low-density infrastructure-rich Global North suburban areas, rapidly developing Chinese suburbs, and the deeply socially stratified suburbs of poor Global South countries. Despite stark differences between types of suburbs, there are features common to all suburban areas irrespective of their location, and similarities in the infrastructure issues confronting these different categories of suburbs.
Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science
by Timothy ForsythCritical Political Ecology brings political debate to the science of ecology. As political controversies multiply over the science underlying environmental debates, there is an increasing need to understand the relationship between environmental science and politics. In this timely and wide-ranging volume, Tim Forsyth uses an innovative approach to apply political analysis to ecology, and demonstrates how more politicised approaches to science can be used in environmental decision-making.Critical Political Ecology examines:*how social and political factors frame environmental science, and how science in turn shapes politics*how new thinking in philosophy and sociology of science can provide fresh insights into the biophysical causes and impacts of environmental problems*how policy and decision-makers can acknowledge the political influences on science and achieve more effective public participation and governance.
Critical Realism and the Objective Value of Sustainability: Philosophical and Ethical Approaches (Routledge Environmental Ethics)
by Gabriela-Lucia SabauCritical Realism and the Objective Value of Sustainability contributes to the growing discussion surrounding the concept of sustainability, using a critical realist approach within a transdisciplinary theoretical framework to examine how sustainability objectively occurs in the natural world and in society. The book develops an ethical theory of sustainability as an objective value, rooted not in humans’ subjective preferences but in the holistic web of relationships, interdependencies, and obligations existing among living things on Earth, a web believed to have maintained life on Earth over the last 3.7 billion years. It proposes three pillars of sustainability ethics: contentment for the human existence given to us; justice (beyond distributive justice); and meaningful freedom (within ecological and moral limits). Using abductive reasoning, the book infers that there is an out-of-this-world Sustainer behind the Earth’s sustainability acting as a metaphysical source of all being and value. It argues that sustainability value, accepted as a shared understanding of the common good, must guide individual decisions and socio-economic development efforts as a matter of deliberate choice, as well as be built on the awareness that there are non-negotiable, pre-established conditions for our planet’s sustainability. This book will be of interest to students and scholars across fields of inquiry, including sustainability, sustainable development, environmental philosophy and ethics, philosophy of science, and ecological economics, and to whoever may wonder why seasons exists and why humans have creative minds.
Critical Reflections on Regional Competitiveness: Theory, Policy, Practice (Routledge Studies in Human Geography)
by Gillian BristowSince the early 1990s, governments and development agencies have become increasingly preoccupied with the pursuit of regional competitiveness. However, there is considerable confusion around what exactly regional competitiveness means, how it might be achieved, whether and how it can be measured, and whether it is a meaningful and appropriate goal for regional economies. The central aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive and critical account of these debates with reference to theory, policy and practice, and thus to explore the meaning and value of the concept of regional competitiveness. The book is structured into three parts. Part one introduces the concept of regional competitiveness by tracing its origins and exploring its different meanings in regional economic development. This will critically engage with political economy approaches to understanding the nature and dominance of the competitiveness discourse. Part two interrogates the pursuit of regional competitiveness in policy and practice. This critically evaluates the degree to which the pursuit of competitiveness is encouraging convergence in policy agendas in regions through an examination of key determinants of policy sameness and difference, notably benchmarking and devolved governance. Part three explores the limitations to regional competitiveness and explores whether and how its predominance in the policy discourse might be challenged by alternative agendas such as sustainable development and wellbeing. This focuses on the developing qualitative character of regional development. This volume critically engages with the theory and policy of regional competitiveness, thus providing the first integrated critique of the concept for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as academics interested in regional development and policy. It will unpack the concept of regional competitiveness and explain its usefulness, limitations and policy appeal, as well as examining its sustainability in the light of evolving governance structures and the imperatives of broadening regional development agendas.
Critical Risk Research
by Stuart Lane Matthew Kearnes Francisco KlauserRisk Research: Practices, Politics and Ethics offers a collection of essays, written by a wide variety of international researchers in risk research, about what it means to do risk research, and about how - and with what effects - risk research is practiced, articulated and exploited. This approach is based upon the core assumption that: to make a difference in the study of risk, we must move beyond what we usually do, challenging the core assumptions, scientific, economic and social, about how we study, frame, exploit and govern risk. Hence, through a series of essays, the book aims to challenge the current ways in which risk-problems are approached and presented, both conceptually by academics and through the framings that are encoded in the technologies and socio-political and institutional practices used to manage risk. In addressing these questions, the book does not attempt to offer a model of how risk research 'should' be done. Rather, the book provides, through illustration, a challenge to the ways in which risk research is framed as 'problem-solving. ' The book's ultimate objective aims to increase critical debate between different disciplines, approaches, concepts and problems.
Critical Sustainability Sciences: Intercultural and Emancipatory Perspectives (Routledge Studies in Sustainability)
by Stephan Rist Patrick Bottazzi Johanna JacobiThis book explores Critical Sustainability Sciences, a new field of scientific inquiry into sustainability issues. It builds on a highly novel integration of elements from relational ontologies, critical theory, political ecology, and intercultural philosophy in support of emancipatory perspectives on sustainability and development. The book Critical Sustainability Sciences begins by uncovering the weaknesses of mainstream sustainability science and debates on sustainable development. The new field of Critical Sustainability Sciences has grown out of a deep engagement with relational ontologies, which helps to overcome the dualist ontology underlying mainstream notions of sustainability and development. Dualist ontologies reinforce problematic anthropocentric divisions, for example, between humans and nature, subjects and objects, mind and matter, body and soul, etc. Examples from indigenous peoples in Bolivia, India, and Ghana – as well as integrative movements in Chile, Brazil, and Europe – show that relational conceptions of life, rooted in ecosophy and cosmosophy, can provide an intercultural philosophical foundation for Critical Sustainability Sciences. The book concludes by describing three key topics for exploration in Critical Sustainability Sciences: societal reorganization in view of emancipatory, existential, and cognitive self-determination; living labor and commons; and the development of new comprehensive relational scientific paradigms. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of emancipatory and intercultural approaches to sustainability and development.
A Critical Theory for the Anthropocene (Anthropocene – Humanities and Social Sciences)
by Nathanaël WallenhorstThis volume, which is rooted in biogeophysical studies, addresses conceptions of political action in the Anthropocene and the tension between a desire to accomplish the Promethean project of modernity and a post-Promethean approach. This work explores the idea of an anthropological mutation of political consolidation from a “post-Promethean togetherness”, to creating the capacity to act together. The political thinking of the human condition developed by Hannah Arendt is important here as a resource for thinking about humanity in terms of human adventure. This has three dimensions: hubris, the world and coexistence referring respectively to the logic of profit of the homo oeconomicus, the logic of responsibility of the homo collectivus and the logic of the hospitality of the homo religatus. The intellectual and political attitude outlined in this book is an extension of critical theory: the work also puts forward a critique of what poses a problem in our relationship to the world and suggests how to overcome it, the ultimate goal being social transformation. The author propose an uprising and an anthropological consolidation of politics based on the revitalization that is brought about by the sharing of a conviviality both between humans and with what is non-human. The identification of conviviality as an educational paradigm to survive the Anthropocene gives us the much needed reason for hope despite this heritage of the Anthropocene. In addition to Arendtian thinking, this critical theory for the Anthropocene draws on the political thinking of several contemporary authors including Maurice Bellet, Hartmut Rosa, Andreas Weber, Dominique Bourg, and Christian Arnsperger. This volume is of interest to researchers in the Anthropocene.
Critical Thinking in the Sustainable Rehabilitation and Risk Management of the Built Environment: CRIT-RE-BUILT. Proceedings of the International Conference, Iași, Romania, November 7-9, 2019 (Springer Series in Geomechanics and Geoengineering)
by Ancuța RotaruThis proceedings book presents contributions to the International Conference on Critical Thinking in the Sustainable Rehabilitation and Risk Management of the Built Environment – CRIT-RE-BUILT – held in Iași, Romania, November 7–9, 2019. It mirrors outcomes in fundamental and applied research covering a broad palette of competences like observations, analysis, interpretation, evaluation, problem-solving and decision making. The book sets up eight chapters related to rehabilitation and risk in the built environment. Each chapter starts with a broad state-of-the-art presentation comprising the latest ideas and methods in the field assessing and asserting synthesized levels of research, development and novelty through a critical thinking process. The authors of the eight presentations are partners in the E+ Programme for Strategic Partnerships Rehabilitation of the Built Environment in the Context of Smart City and Sustainable Development Concepts for Knowledge Transfer and Lifelong Learning (RE-BUILT).
Critical Urban Infrastructure Handbook
by M. HamadaA reference for engineers and facilities professionals involved in the planning, operations, management, and maintenance of all urban utilities, this handbook addresses water supply and sewerage, power, gas, telecommunications joint utility corridor (utilidor) lifeline facilities, and other critical civil infrastructure lifelines. It covers the design and construction of facilities, maintenance, disaster management, environmental protection, and disaster and emergency recovery measures. It also discusses urban planning, life cycle cost, GIS analysis of lifeline systems, computerized integrated management systems, and the use of new materials and technologies.
The Critical Villager: Beyond Community Participation
by Eric DudleyWhen aid to the Third World actually works it is usually on such a small scale that it makes little impact on the world's problems. Can demands for generalizable actions be reconciled with location-specific solutions? The Critical Villager considers how community-based technical aid can be made more effective and sustainable. Calling for development workers, policy makers and researchers to put themselves in the place of the intended beneficiaries of aid, it suggests concrete principles for action and research. It argues that participatory research and 'transfer of technology' should not be regarded as rival models for development but rather as complementary components in a single process of effective aid.
Critical Zone and Ecosystem Dynamics (Advances in Critical Zone Science)
by Timothy White Antonello ProvenzaleThe critical zone is the thin outer veneer of continental Earth extending from the top of the vegetation canopy to subsurface depths where fresh groundwater circulates. It is the heterogeneous amalgamation of landscapes, ecosystems, and subsurface environments. The concept of the critical zone is relatively new and while thousands of manuscripts have been published from this interdisciplinary field, they exist within a wide array of journals, and none have comprehensively addressed the intersection between the geosciences and ecosystem science—“where rock meets life”. The goal of this contributed book is to promote the great potential that exists in a merger of critical zone and ecosystem science to further scientific discovery by leveraging the strengths of multiple disciplines to address societally relevant questions, keep pace with scientific advances, and more effectively engage with broader scientific communities and the public. The core readership will be collaborative researchers working at the intersection between the greater Earth, environmental and ecological sciences, and policy and business sectors that draw on science evidence to support sustainable economic development. The book also serves further readership that includes scientists from many fields, particularly those in early and mid-career stages who are interested in environmental sustainability and are seeking to step out from disciplinary research into collaborative cross-disciplinary study.
Critically Engaging Participatory Action Research
by Sara KindonThis timely and informative book reasserts the value of Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR): an approach to participatory action research (PAR) that is informed by critical theories attending to questions of privilege and power, and that generates collaborations focused on challenging structural inequality.The authors, writing explicitly from Minority World perspectives, are experienced researcher-practitioners who have worked with communities in the UK, USA, South Africa, Australia, India, and Colombia over many years. They offer an assessment, exploration, and illustration of CPAR at this point in time, outlining how the approach has evolved over time and space. Exploring its roots in strands of critical thought including postcolonialism, anti-imperialism, feminism, antiracism, queer theory, and Indigenous ontologies, the book asks how PAR is being critically re-engaged to maintain its commitment to greater justice and transformational change. Each chapter provides a rich case study of how these theories inform current collaborations and offers reflection on the entanglements of power that come with attempting CPAR in different institutional and geopolitical contexts. Their examples show that critical interrogation of PAR practices may lead to innovative and impactful outcomes for those involved, as well as new theoretical and substantive research findings.The collection will be of especial interest to students and researchers across the social sciences and humanities, as well as those working outside universities, who are interested in developing or extending their use of CPAR.
Critiquing Sustainability, Changing Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Sustainability)
by Jenneth ParkerTo increasing numbers of people, sustainability is the key challenge of the twenty-first century. In the many fields where it is a goal, persistent problems obstruct the efforts of those trying to make a difference. The task of this book is to provide an overview of the current state of philosophy in the context of what philosophy is, could be or should be – in relation to sustainability and the human future on Earth. The book is conceived as a contribution to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, helping to link work on philosophy and sustainability. Critiquing Sustainability, Changing Philosophy focusses on the importance of philosophical work to the formation and effectiveness of global civil society and social movements for sustainability in the context of the Anthropocene age of the Earth. It takes a transdisciplinary systems approach that challenges philosophy and concludes by proposing a greatly enhanced role for philosophy in contributing to global public reason for sustainability. This book will be of interest to philosophers, sustainability practitioners and thinkers, policy makers and all those engaged in the global movement for sustainability.
Crocodile Undone: The Domestication of Australia’s Fauna (Animalibus: Of Animals and Cultures #15)
by Marcus Baynes-RockAcross the world, animals are being domesticated at an unprecedented rate and scale. But what exactly is domestication, and what does it tell us about ourselves? In this book, Marcus Baynes-Rock seeks the common thread linking stories about the domestication of Australia's native animals, arguing that domestication is part of a process by which late modernity threatens to undo the world.In a deeply personal account, the author tells of his encounters with crocodiles and emus behind fences, dingoes and kangaroos crossing boundaries, and native bees producing honey in his suburban backyard. Drawing on comparisons between Aboriginal and colonial Australians, Baynes-Rock reveals how the domestication of Australia’s fauna is a process of "unmaking." As an extension of late modernity, the connections that tie humans and other animals to wider ecologies are being severed, threatening to isolate us and our domesticates from the rest of the world. It is here that Baynes-Rock reveals a key difference between Aboriginal and colonial Australian modes of landscape management: while one is focused on a systemic approach and sees humans as integral to ecological integrity, the other seeks to sever domesticates from ecological processes. The question that emerges is: How might we reconfigure and maintain these connections without undoing humanity?Written in the author’s characteristically frank, passionate, and humorous style, Crocodile Undone takes the reader on a journey across both physical and philosophical landscapes. This fascinating narrative will appeal to anyone interested in the vital connections between humans and animals.
Crocodile Undone: The Domestication of Australia’s Fauna (Animalibus)
by Marcus Baynes-RockAcross the world, animals are being domesticated at an unprecedented rate and scale. But what exactly is domestication, and what does it tell us about ourselves? In this book, Marcus Baynes-Rock seeks the common thread linking stories about the domestication of Australia's native animals, arguing that domestication is part of a process by which late modernity threatens to undo the world.In a deeply personal account, the author tells of his encounters with crocodiles and emus behind fences, dingoes and kangaroos crossing boundaries, and native bees producing honey in his suburban backyard. Drawing on comparisons between Aboriginal and colonial Australians, Baynes-Rock reveals how the domestication of Australia’s fauna is a process of “unmaking.” As an extension of late modernity, the connections that tie humans and other animals to wider ecologies are being severed, threatening to isolate us and our domesticates from the rest of the world. It is here that Baynes-Rock reveals a key difference between Aboriginal and colonial Australian modes of landscape management: while one is focused on a systemic approach and sees humans as integral to ecological integrity, the other seeks to sever domesticates from ecological processes. The question that emerges is: How might we reconfigure and maintain these connections without undoing humanity?Written in the author’s characteristically frank, passionate, and humorous style, Crocodile Undone takes the reader on a journey across both physical and philosophical landscapes. This fascinating narrative will appeal to anyone interested in the vital connections between humans and animals.
Crooked Creek
by Maximilian Werner2012 Eric Hoffer Book Awards for General Fiction Honorable Mention2011 Utah Book Award FinalistCrooked Creek takes place during the latter part of westward expansion and chronicles the lives (and deaths) of the Wood family. The Woods-Preston and Sara-must flee Arizona when they, along with Sara's parents and little brother Jasper, unwittingly get caught up in the plunder and sale of American Indian corpses and funerary objects. Preston, Sara, and Jasper end up in the Heber Valley of Utah, where they seek the support of Sara's Uncle Neff until they can be reunited with Sara's mother and father. But from the moment they ride into Heber, Preston and Sara learn that life in the valley is not as it appears, and that no matter how far we run, we cannot escape the past. Maximilian Werner is the author of Black River Dreams, a collection of literary fly fishing essays that won the 2008 Utah Arts Council's Original Writing Competition for Nonfiction: Book. Mr. Werner's poems, fiction, creative nonfiction, and essays have appeared in several journals and magazines, including Matter Journal: Edward Abbey Edition, Bright Lights Film Journal, The North American Review, ISLE, Weber Studies, Fly Rod and Reel, and Columbia. He lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and two children and teaches writing at the University of Utah."Maximilian Werner is a fresh and grounded writer, a welcome and original new voice." -Thomas McGuane, author of Driving on the Rim"Here in the deep measured prose of Max Werner is a western story, harsh and lush as the old world it depicts. Crooked Creek shows again that one of the natural laws of the wilderness--along with wind and stone and animals and family--is violence. Just as wind and water shaped the stone, trouble shaped these men. With its compelling, layered story, this rich book is a reader's pleasure." -Ron Carlson, author of The Signal"Max Werner's Crooked Creek offers a haunting voyage into the past and into living landscapes sharpened by western light, resonating with the work of such authors as Cormac McCarthy and Wallace Stegner. A narrative of the vitality of family bonds, it is also a tale of the heroic struggle to carry the burden of memory and to transform history's nightmares into visions of possibility, as Octavio Paz once argued was the high calling of literature. Crooked Creek reminds us of the tough aesthetic that is required to sustain hope in family, in community, and in the staggering and heartbreaking beauty of nature that Werner's prose powerfully illuminates, while also reckoning with the dark sins of betrayal and violence that are the legacies of the American West. Werner convinces us that no meaningful sense of place is possible otherwise."-George Handley, author of Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River
Crop Adaptation to Climate Change
by Shyam Singh Yadav Robert J. Redden Jerry L. Hatfield Hermann Lotze-Campen Anthony J. HallA major task of our time is to ensure adequate food supplies for the world's current population (now nearing 7 billion) in a sustainable way while protecting the vital functions and biological diversity of the global environment. The task of providing for a growing population is likely to be even more difficult in view of actual and potential changes in climatic conditions due to global warming, and as the population continues to grow. Current projections suggest that the world's temperatures will rise 1.8-4.0 by 2100 and population may reach 8 billion by the year 2025 and some 9 billion by mid-century, after which it may stabilize. This book addresses these critical issues by presenting the science needed not only to understand climate change effects on crops but also to adapt current agricultural systems, particularly in regard to genetics, to the changing conditions. Crop Adaptation to Climate Change covers a spectrum of issues related to both crops and climatic conditions. The first two sections provide a foundation on the factors involved in climate stress, assessing current climate change by region and covering crop physiological responses to these changes. The third and final section contains chapters focused on specific crops and the current research to improve their genetic adaptation to climate change. Written by an international team of authors, Crop Adaptation to Climate Change is a timely look at the potentially serious consequences of climate change for our global food supply, and is an essential resource for academics, researchers and professionals in the fields of crop science, agronomy, plant physiology and molecular biology; crop consultants and breeders; as well as climate and food scientists.
Crop Biofortification: Biotechnological Approaches for Achieving Nutritional Security under Changing Climate
by Adnan Noor Shah Sajid Fiaz Muhammad Aslam Javed Iqbal Abdul QayyumDevelop more nutritious crops to aid in the fight against world hunger with this timely volume One in nine people worldwide suffer from hunger or food scarcity. Massively increasing food production is one of the most urgent scientific projects in the modern world, particularly as a changing climate places increasing pressure on the global food supply and on sustainable food production processes. Biofortification is a process in which plant breeding, improved agronomic practices, and/or modern biotechnology are employed to increase nutrient density of crops without sacrificing any of their desirable characteristics. It’s an essential tool in the global fight against hunger. Crop Biofortification offers an up-to-the-minute overview of this essential subject and its recent advances. It covers all the latest methodologies and techniques deployed in biofortification, as well as surveying plant responses to genetically induced biofortification and the effect of climate change on biofortified crops. Designed to allow for the application of these techniques at the field level, it’s a significant contribution towards the search for a sustainable global food supply. Crop Biofortification readers will also find: Presentation of recent advances in omics, particularly metabolomics, which can decipher potential changes in plants caused by biofortificationDetailed discussion of methods for increasing the nutritional content of edible plants to address specific nutritional deficienciesContributions towards a road map for increasing global food production by 70% before the year 2050 Crop Biofortification is ideal for researchers, policymakers, and professionals interested in the potential biofortification of crop plants, as well as graduate and advanced undergraduate students in agronomy, plant physiology, plant breeding and genetics, agricultural biotechnology, and related fields.
Crop Genetic Diversity in the Field and on the Farm
by Anthony H. Brown Toby Hodgkin Devra I. JarvisBased on twenty years of global research, this is the first comprehensive reference on crop genetic diversity as it is maintained on farmland around the world. Showcasing the findings of seven experts representing the fields of ecology, crop breeding, genetics, anthropology, economics, and policy, this invaluable resource places farmer-managed crop biodiversity squarely in the center of the science needed to feed the world and restore health to our productive landscapes. It will prove to be an essential tool in the training of agricultural and environmental scientists seeking the solutions necessary to ensure healthy, resilient ecosystems for future generations.
Crop Genetic Resources as a Global Commons: Challenges in International Law and Governance (Issues in Agricultural Biodiversity)
by Michael Halewood Isabel López Noriega Selim LouafiFarmers have engaged in collective systems of conservation and innovation – improving crops and sharing their reproductive materials – since the earliest plant domestications. Relatively open flows of plant germplasm attended the early spread of agriculture; they continued in the wake of (and were driven by) imperialism, colonization, emigration, trade, development assistance and climate change. As crops have moved around the world, and agricultural innovation and production systems have expanded, so too has the scope and coverage of pools of shared plant genetic resources that support those systems. The range of actors involved in their conservation and use has also increased dramatically. This book addresses how the collective pooling and management of shared plant genetic resources for food and agriculture can be supported through laws regulating access to genetic resources and the sharing of benefits arising from their use. Since the most important recent development in the field has been the creation of the multilateral system of access and benefit-sharing under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, many of the chapters in this book will focus on the architecture and functioning of that system. The book analyzes tensions that are threatening to undermine the potential of access and benefit-sharing laws to support the collective pooling of plant genetic resources, and identifies opportunities to address those tensions in ways that could increase the scope, utility and sustainability of the global crop commons.
Crop Pollination by Bees, Volume 1: Evolution, Ecology, Conservation, and Management
by Dr Keith DelaplaneSince the second half of the 20th Century, our agricultural bee pollinators have faced mounting threats from ecological disturbance and pan-global movement of pathogens and parasites. At the same time, the area of pollinator-dependent crops is increasing globally with no end in sight. Never before has so much been asked of our finite pool of bee pollinators. This book not only explores the evolutionary and ecologic bases of these dynamics, it translates this knowledge into practical research-based guidance for using bees to pollinate crops. It emphasizes conserving wild bee populations as well as culturing honey bees, bumble bees, and managed solitary bees. To cover such a range of biology, theory, and practice from the perspectives of both the pollinator and the crop, the book is divided into two volumes. Volume 1 focuses on bees, their biology, coevolution with plants, foraging ecology and management, and gives practical ways to increase bee abundance and pollinating performance on the farm. Volume 2 (also available from CABI) focuses on crops, with chapters addressing crop-specific requirements and bee pollination management recommendations. Both volumes will be essential reading for farmers, horticulturists and gardeners, researchers and professionals working in insect ecology and conservation, and students of entomology and crop protection.
Crop Pollination by Bees, Volume 2: Individual Crops and their Bees
by Dr Keith DelaplaneSince the second half of the 20th Century, our agricultural bee pollinators have faced mounting threats from ecological disturbance and pan-global movement of pathogens and parasites. At the same time, the area of pollinator-dependent crops is increasing globally with no end in sight. Never before has so much been asked of our finite pool of bee pollinators. This book not only explores the evolutionary and ecologic bases of these dynamics, it translates this knowledge into practical research-based guidance for using bees to pollinate crops. It emphasizes conserving wild bee populations as well as culturing honey bees, bumble bees, and managed solitary bees. To cover such a range of biology, theory, and practice from the perspectives of both the pollinator and the crop, the book is divided into two volumes. Volume 1 focuses on bees, their biology, coevolution with flowering plants, foraging ecology and management, and gives practical ways to increase bee abundance and pollinating performance on the farm. Volume 2 (this volume) focuses on crops, with chapters addressing crop-specific requirements and bee pollination management recommendations. Both volumes are essential reading for farmers, horticulturists and gardeners, researchers and professionals working in insect ecology and conservation, and students of entomology and crop protection.