World

This book looks at the current state of the world’s forests and progress towards more sustainable forest conservation globally. It also focuses on how Australia is managing and conserving its own native forests, with topics including forestry protection policies; tree-clearing and logging practices; the debate over native forest logging, including old growth forests; sustainable forestry practices, plantations and certification; and addressing habitat destruction and species loss.

More than 400 colour pictures illustrate typical natural ecosystems and cultural landscapes. The focus is on the ecological conditions and characteristics that have a particularly strong influence (e.g. fire as an ecological factor, human use of natural resources, physiological adaptations). The aim of the book is to develop a causal understanding of the individual habitats.

How can we guarantee a right to life or a right to health without also guaranteeing a decent environment in which to exercise these rights? It is becoming increasingly obvious that a high quality environment is key to the fundamental human rights of life and health, and associated rights such as the right to clean water, adequate housing, and food. This book canvasses a range of law and policy issues concerning human rights and the environment.

While Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have bountiful supplies of renewable resources and an island culture that is iconic of paradise, the challenges ahead are daunting. While the future cannot be predicted, the development of plausible futures built on combinations of realistic outlooks can offer a basis for policy choices. This report shows that there is much that SIDS can do proactively to anticipate environmental problems and their economic consequences or even avoid

This book explores the global conservation and management of sharks. There has been a rapid decline in populations of many shark species, while new science has emerged of the critical role they play in marine ecosystems. However, conservation law and policy have been slow to develop, with only a handful of iconic species being protected worldwide.

Housing may be the Third World's most intractable problem, but mud, adobe, earth-bricks, soil-cement and other traditional building materials are cheap, readily available and can be made and used by the poor people themselves to build their own homes. Today, mud perhaps offers the only practical prospect for building the millions of houses which will be needed over the next twenty years. 

For the past two decades, governments have established new international mandates ensuring that gender equality and women’s empowerment are central to environmental decision-making and sustainable development. However, the lack of a mechanism to monitor and measure government progress has contributed to little or no implementation of these mandates.

A companion volume to Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth, Protecting the Wild provides a necessary addition to the conversation about the future of conservation in the so-called Anthropocene. Even as the biodiversity crisis accelerates, a growing number of voices are suggesting that protected areas are passé. Protecting the Wild offers a spirited argument for the robust protection of the natural world.

As the need increases for sound estimates of impending rates of animal and plant species extinction, scientists must have a firm grounding in the qualitative and quantitative methods required to make the best possible predictions. Extinction Rates offers the most wide-ranging and practical introduction to those methods available.