Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Environmental Science (see also Chemistry - Environmental)

Around the world, asbestos-related diseases are on the increase. Meanwhile, in many newly-industrializing and developing countries, asbestos use continues unabated. This book, based on anthropological fieldwork in the UK, India and South Africa, explores people's understandings of their illness, risk, compensation and regulation, contrasting these personal and community narratives with formal medical and legal understandings.

Linda Waldman shows how the domination of medical and legal framings of risk and disease over those of workers, sufferers and activists can narrow the...

Is noise the most neglected green issue of our age? This book argues compellingly that it is, and tells you all you need to know about noise as a social, cultural, environmental and health issue.

Across the world, more people are disturbed by noise in their day-today lives than by any other pollutant on Earth. From the shanty towns of Mumbai to the smart boulevards of Paris, noise is a problem. It is damaging people's health, costing billions, and threatening the world's natural sound systems in the same way that climate change is altering its eco-systems.

Drawing on...

Climate Policy Changes in Germany and Japan compares two decades of climate policy development in Germany and Japan. It examines whether there is any difference between the types and levels of policy change in the two countries, and, if so, what factors account for the difference. Using a comparison of climate policy changes in Germany and Japan from 1987 to 2005 as a basis, it also discusses the effectiveness and the limits of existing theories of policy change and policy process, most notably the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), Punctuated Equilibrium Approach and Multiple...

The supply of reliable and safe water is a key challenge for developing countries, particularly India. Community management has long been the declared model for rural water supply and is recognised to be critical for its implementation and success. Based on 20 detailed successful case studies from across India, this book outlines future rural water supply approaches for all lower-income countries as they start to follow India on the economic growth (and subsequent service levels) transition.

The case studies cover state-level wealth varying from US$2,600 to US$10,000 GDP per person...

Environmental Fate and Transport Analysis with Compartment Modeling explains how to use the powerful, highly flexible, and intuitive compartment approach to estimate the distribution of chemical contaminants in environmental media in time and space.

This numerical technique enables readers to easily develop the equations that describe complex environmental problems by assembling the equations out of compartmental building blocks. The compartments may...

Democracy and Climate Change explores the various ways in which democratic principles can lead governments to respond differently to climate change. The election cycle can lead to short-termism, which often appears to be at odds with the long term nature of climate change, with its latency between cause and effect. However, it is clear that some democracies deal with climate change better than others, and this book demonstrates that overall, stronger democratic qualities tend to correlate with improved climate performance.

Beginning by outlining a general concept of...

Cooling buildings is a major global energy consumer and the energy requirement is growing year by year. This guide to solar cooling technology explains all you need to know about how solar energy can be converted into cooling energy. It outlines the difference between heat-driven and photovoltaic-driven systems and gives examples of both, making clear in what situations solar cooling technology makes sense. It includes chapters on:

- solar thermal collectors

- solar cooling technologies

- cold distribution

- storage components

- designing and sizing...

This book is a remarkable case study of an environmental policy initiative for a national environmental regulatory system in the information age. In 1995 the Indonesian Ministry of Environment took the bold step to launch an environmental disclosure initiative called the Program for Pollution Control, Evaluation and Rating (PROPER). Under PROPER, environmental performance of companies is mapped into a five-color grading scale - Gold for excellent, Green for very good, Blue for good, Red for non-compliance, and Black for causing environmental damage. These ratings are then publicly...

Based on nine years of research, this is the first book to offer an in-depth ethnographic study of a transnational environmentalist federation and of activists themselves. The book presents an account of the daily life and the ethical strivings of environmental activist members of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), exploring how a transnational federation is constituted and maintained, and how different people strive to work together in their hope of contributing to the creation of "a better future for the globe." In the context of FoEI, a great diversity of environmentalisms from...