Environmental Crises in Central Asia: From Steppes to Seas, from Deserts to Glaciers

ISBN-13: 9781138597532 / Angielski / Miękka / 2018 / 196 str.

Eric Freedman; Mark Neuzil

Opis

This multidisciplinary book highlights the major environmental challenges in the Caucasus and in Central Asia. These include the impact of climate change on glacial melt, desertification, deforestation, destruction of habitat and biodiversity, overfishing, radioactive and hazardous wastes, water quality and supply, energy exploration, air pollution, pesticide pollution and environmental diseases. All of these have implications that cross national borders and may affect economic, political and cultural relationships on a vast geographic scale. yet, the region’s eight governments—most of them burdened by limited economic resources, weak civil society institutions and political authoritarianism rooted in their lengthy Soviet legacies—have shown little resolve to address these complex challenges.

Spis treści

1. Introduction: Examining the Terrain  Part I: Climate Change  2. Less Water from the Mountains? Consequences of Glacier Changes in Central Asia  Part II: Water  3. Increasing Human Security to Avert Water Wars in the Ferghana Valley  Part III: Energy  4. Energy Exploration and the Caspian Region: Sturgeon, Seals, and Sulfur  5. The ‘Great Future of the Country’? Dams and Hydroelectricity Discourses in Kyrgyzstan  Part IV: Public Policy and Mass Media  6. Separating Environmental Myths from Realities in Central Asia  7. Tajikistan: An Environmental Scan  8. Newspaper Coverage of Water and Other Ecological Issues in Kazakhstan during Perestroika and Today  9. Western News Coverage of Environmental Issues in Post-Soviet Central Asia  Part V: Environmental Health  10. Radiation Health Risk Studies Associated with Nuclear Testing In Kazakhstan  Part VI: Ecology  11. Kazakhstan’s Northern Aral Sea Today: Partial Ecosystem Restoration and Economic Recovery  12. Conservation and Multipurpose Management of the Unique Walnut-fruit Forests of Southern Kyrgyzstan  13. Ecologically-based Integrated Pest Management Programs for Food Security Crops in Central Asia  14. A Treasure in the Desert? Carbon Stock Estimates for Haloxylon aphyllum in the Northeastern Karakum Desert  15. Conclusion: Through the Crystal Ball

O autorze

Eric Freedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, is Knight Chair and Director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University, USA.

Mark Neuzil is a professor of communication and journalism at University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., USA, where he teaches environmental communication, multimedia reporting, communication history, and communication ethics.