Human Footprints on the Global Environment : Threats to Sustainability

by Rosa, Eugene A.; Diekmann, Andreas; Dietz, Thomas; Jaeger, Carlo

• ISBN13: 9780262013154
• ISBN10: 0262013150
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-31
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Winner of the Gerald L. Young Book Award for 2009, awarded by the Society for Human Ecology. The colossal human ecological footprint now threatens the sustainability of the entire planet. Scientists, policymakers, and other close observers know that any understanding of the causes of global environmental change is a function of understanding its human dimension-the range of human choices and actions that affect the environment. This book offers a state-of-the-art assessment of research on the human dimensions of global environmental change, describing how global threats to sustainability have come about, providing an interpretive framework for understanding environmental change, reviewing recent work in the social and ecological sciences, and discussing which paths for future advances in our knowledge may prove most promising. The chapters, by prominent North American and European authors, offer perspectives on population, consumption, land cover and use, institutional actions, and culture. They discuss such topics as risk, the new Structural Human Ecology approach to analyzing anthropogenic drivers of global environmental change, recent progress in understanding land use change, international environmental regimes, the concept of the commons, and the comparative vulnerability of societies around the world. Contributors:Ulrich Beck, Thomas Dietz, Carlo C. Jaeger, Svein Jentoft, Jeanne X. Kasperson, Roger E. Kasperson, Bonnie J. McCay, Emilio F. Moran, Eugene A. Rosa, B. L. Turner II, Richard York, Oran R. Young

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Preface: Footprints Small and Colossal	p. ix
Global Transformations: PaSSAGE to a New Ecological Era	p. 1
World Risk Society as Cosmopolitan Society	p. 47
Ecological Questions in a Framework of Manufactured UncertaintiesUlrich Beck
Human Driving Forces of Global Change	p. 83
Dominant Perspectives
Progress in the Study of Land Use/Cover Change and the Outlook for the Next Decade	p. 135
The Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes	p. 165
Uncommon Ground	p. 203
Critical Perspectives on Common Property
Vulnerability of Coupled Human-Ecological Systems to Global Environmental Change	p. 231
Human Dimensions of Coupled Human-Natural Systems	p. 295
A Look Backward and Forward
About the Contributors	p. 315
Index	p. 319
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.