As we enter a time when human influence is so profoundly shaping the natural world, water is a prime focus for our technologies and victim of our largely unintended pressures. In particular, large dams exert an array of profound effects on ecosystems and the services that they provide to society and this insightful new book argues that there are more appropriate systems and technologies. Featuring case studies from China, India and South Africa The Hydropolitics of Dams charts its way through these troubled waters by looking at the history, benefits and down-sides of dams and alternative...

The landscapes that humanity have inhabited throughout our evolutionary history have met our needs and also substantially shaped our progress. We too, have substantially shaped the landscape, atmosphere and waters of this resilient yet finite world, appropriating increasing proportions of the resources of nature to meet our shifting and growing demands while simultaneously degrading the quality and extent of ecosystems together with their capacities to meet the needs of a burgeoning population. Notwithstanding our total dependence on the Earth's natural resources, this relationship between...

Air is vital to human existenceit protects us from radiation, maintains climate and weather patterns, disperses seeds and pollen, and serves as an alternative energy source. Despite all of this, air remains neglected in environmental policy, with its ownerless, borderless nature making it difficult to campaign and legislate.
Breathing Space is the first book to properly integrate air into the wider environmental discourse. Mark Everard assesses the atmosphere s structure and its role within our overall environment and argues persuasively for the necessity of governments and...