Summary
Contents
Subject index
The Handbook of Environment and Society focuses on the interactions between people, societies and economies, and the state of nature and the environment. Editorially integrated but written from multi-disciplinary perspectives, The Handbook of Environment and Society is organised in seven sections: - Environmental thought: past and present - Valuing the environment - Knowledges and knowing - Political economy of environmental change - Environmental technologies - Redesigning natures - Institutions and policies for influencing the environment Key themes include: locations where the environment-society relation is most acute: where, for example, there are few natural resources or where industrialization is unregulated; the discussion of these issues at different scales: local, regional, national, and global; the cost of damage to resources; and the relation between principal actors in the environment-society nexus. Aimed at an international audience of academics, research students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers, The Handbook on Environment and Society presents readers in social science and natural science with a manual of the past, present and future of environment-society links.
Healthy Ecosystems: An Evolving Paradigm
Healthy Ecosystems: An Evolving Paradigm
Introduction
The concept of ecosystem health has evolved considerably over the past decade. Its beginnings can be found in obscure and until the mid-1990s all but forgotten writings of the American naturalist, Aldo Leopold. Independently conceived in the late 1970s, it has now blossomed to become a guidepost for many national and international agencies concerned with assessing and rehabilitating the state of the environment at national and international levels. It is, at base, a very simple notion — namely that ecosystems can become unhealthy, if overstressed by anthropogenic activities. But the assessment of ecosystem health has proved far more difficult — partly because ecosystems are themselves highly complex, ever changing entities, and difficult to define and delimit. ...
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