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This Open Access book explores sustainability transitions with a focus on their influence on the relationships between cores and peripheries, the rural and the urban, and the large and the small-scale. The societal changes induced by sustainability transitions are expected to assemble as a variegated and heterogeneous process reproduced by different spatial contexts and scales. Hence, the practical solutions and impacts of processes framed as sustainability transitions are expected to vary between different localities in terms of their natural, material, or human resources, the heritage of the development, their power and market relations, virtual and physical connections as well as shifting individual rationalities – within and across certain socio-economic spaces. To highlight these socio-spatial processes, their alignments, frictions and contradictions for sustainability transitions, this book and its contributions call for an increased engagement in the scalar aspects of sustainability transitions and their governance. The authors argue that rescaling follows from two observations on the extant literature concerning sustainability transitions. Firstly there is a call for a stronger engagement of sustainability transitions research with questions of place and relocalization practices, their embedded power relations, but also questions on small-scale trajectories for the territorial and economic materializations in terms of production and market reach as an alternative to the large-scale dominance of resource exploitation and use. Secondly there is a call for increased attention to the relational processes and ontological framing that reproduce mobilities and scalar shifts in governance arrangements.

This open access book highlights the negative and positive health effects of chronic exposure to environmental sound. It describes the state of the art in the field from a public health point of view and puts it in a broad societal perspective looking at sound from physical, social, psychological, economic and governance angles. Rather than a mere collection of papers around the theme as usually provided in special issues, this book offers a comprehensive look at the meaning of sound in society and its impacts and provides directions to further advance the field.

This open access book explores the complementarity of hydropower with new energy sources such as solar and wind in the global energy transition. It analyzes the technological advantages, environmental impacts, and economic potential of combining hydropower and new energy sources, while examining the related policies and market mechanisms. Through a multidimensional approach, the book demonstrates the importance of this energy integration in improving energy system efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, and promoting sustainable development. Starting with the challenges and strategies of technology integration, the book will explore the role of smart grid management and energy storage technologies in this context, providing quantitative and qualitative assessments of the ecosystem and socio-economic impacts of such energy synergies. Valuable knowledge and practical guidance for energy researchers, policy makers and professionals in the field of sustainable development.

This open access book outlines the latest results in analysing, assessing, and managing terrorist risk in the urban outdoor built environment. In detail, contents refer to the outdoor Open Areas (such as streets, squares, urban parks and other public spaces in our cities) exposed to such violent events considering the physical elements and properties of the built environment and users. PThe built environment features, including layout, use and management, are combined with terrorist threats issues and user behaviours in emergency conditions, to determine a set of complementary tools for the reduction of risk and increase of urban resilience. The contents hence provide different levels of tool analysis, for risk scenario definition, risk assessment, mitigation strategies design and effectiveness evaluation, considering traditional approaches about the issue along with simulation-based approaches relying on understanding and representing user behaviors. This “behavioural design” approach offers the opportunity to manage the level of risk for specific real urban cases over going the normative limitations in Europe that are only referred to few countries and sometimes deal with the prevention of violent acts by intelligence activities as the exclusive way to face this issue. In addition, the focus on the characters of cultural and historic places and their resilience is increasing by means of introduction of mitigation and compatible solutions providing a complementary chapter for the design of resilient cities in all of their peculiarities (peripheries, consolidated, and historical). In this sense, it is one of the first organized attempts to analyse the main limitations of current solutions in these outdoor Open Areas and, at the same time, to clearly introduce the importance of human behaviours and the various choices in emergency evacuation conditions, thanks to the proposed behavioural-based simulation approach. The attention is focused on a critical aspect for historic spaces, where morphological conditions are fixed values. Thus, this book represents a sort of guidelines about these user-related issues during such violent events and is useful to both professionals and researchers in the areas of security and urban administration.

This book lays out the promise and potential of schools as community-building institutions. It explores the challenges faced in incorporating schools into broader community development policy, and also recognizes the changing demographics of schools and their need to integrate with economic development policy in order to promote broader community development. The book includes chapters on tax abatements and economic development policy impacts on schools, new approaches to school building renovation, the potential and reach of shared services between communities and schools, and the impact of school-based health centers. It also offers a theory to integrate schools into community development. Key elements include shared power between communities and schools, greater transparency in economic development policy, collaboration across the broad range of community actors, and engagement of diverse voices. These elements build a greater sense of belonging across generations and class and racial divides. Creative democracy can broaden both school and community development agendas and build a culture of health. This book will help community development and school leaders recognize and pursue the promise of schools as critical community development actors. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license.

This edited volume addresses the environments that exacerbate, exclude, and stigmatise those living with dementia to explore designs and processes that can optimise well-being and independence. Featuring the voices and opinions of people with dementia, the chapters showcase individual homes, special dementia facilities, different forms of care homes, and public spaces, from landscape to urbanism, as examples of how to meet the needs and preferences for those living with dementia now. As a response to a recent Cochrane meta-analysis (2022) which highlighted the problems associated with using traditional, medically orientated evaluative methods for environmental design, this book demonstrates a range of research methods that can be used to inform and investigate good co-design of dementia-enabling environments. Furthermore, the book addresses cultural differences in people’s needs and illustrates past, ongoing, and novel initiatives worldwide. Ultimately, this timely volume focuses on person-centred design that enables empowerment, quality of life, health, and citizenship in people living with dementia. It will be of value to researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students studying gerontology, dementia specifically, and those involved with architecture and the built environment for societal benefit more broadly.

Dieses Open Access Buch vermittelt fundierte Grundlagen und praxisorientierte Anleitungen für die genaue Kartierung von Ackerflächen auf der Grundlage von Bodenparametern wie Textur, pH-Wert und Humusgehalt. Es werden die gegenwärtig bestgeeigneten Kartierungsverfahren beschrieben. Von der Bereinigung der Bodensensordaten bis hin zur Erstellung von Streukarten und der Auswahl des optimalen Kalkdüngers wird jeder Schritt des Prozesses detailliert erklärt. Sämtliche Funktionen und Algorithmen zum Buch sind als “R”-Skripte via Download verfügbar. Mit Hilfe von Beispieldaten und einem Tutorial kann die Prozesskette zur Streukartenerstellung mit der freien Softwareumgebung “R” als Einstieg in mathematische Methoden des Precision Farming, u.a. räumliche Statistik und Entscheidungsunterstützungsalgorithmen, nachvollzogen werden. Darüber hinaus bietet dieses Buch praktische Einblicke in die landwirtschaftliche Praxis, indem es die Bedeutung präziser Bodentexturkarten für eine effiziente Grunddüngung erläutert. Anhand von anschaulichen Praxisbeispielen werden die Auswirkungen ungenauer Bodeninformationen auf die Nährstoffversorgung des Bodens und die Umwelt verdeutlicht. Mit seinem ganzheitlichen Ansatz liefert dieses Buch nicht nur praktische Anleitungen, sondern auch wertvolles Hintergrundwissen zu Fachthemen wie Bodenacidität, Kalkdüngestoffen und Kartierungsmethoden. Es ist ein idealer Begleiter für Landwirt*innen, Berater*innen und Wissenschaftler*innen, die ihre landwirtschaftlichen Praktiken optimieren und ihre Erträge steigern möchten.

A Queer Reading of Nawabi Architecture and the Colonial Archive explores the architectural production of nawabs Asaf-ud-Daula and Wajid Ali Shah and reveals the colonial bias against queer expression. It offers methods of using queer strategies to read archival evidence against the grain and rewrite erased, overlooked, and suppressed histories. The book provides its readers a unique queer postcolonial architectural history of Lucknow from 1775–1857. It highlights the nawabs’ non-normative expressions, which not only offered a fierce resistance to the colonial enterprise but also were instrumental in furthering Lucknow as a cultural center. It simultaneously extracts parameters from queer studies and redefines them to illustrate ways in which queer architecture can be characterized. It reconstructs the footprint of nawabi architecture erased by the colonial enterprise and places it back on map—an exercise not undertaken meticulously until now. A Queer Reading of Nawabi Architecture and the Colonial Archive is intended for scholars and students of queer studies, postcolonial studies, architectural history, and the global south, as well as the citizens of Lucknow.

This book disrupts the dominant underlying international norms informing urban development strategies across African cities. International policy frameworks have created a new universal agenda for developing cities. However, these frameworks have also imposed global paradigms and discourses that are often in conflict with local urbanisms. As we approach the deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, there is need for reflection and deliberation on a post-2030 agenda. The authors identify powerful assumptions, norms, and positionalities that obfuscate the efforts to achieve sustainable development in African cities, as well as along the North–South divide. They argue that a disruptive critique of these normative concepts, grounded in the lived African urban everyday, opens up opportunities to dismantle their assumed neutrality. Through disruption, the authors critically re-interpret the meanings of policy and the praxis of local urbanism, ultimately challenging the logic of universalising concepts underpinning implementation in the current international policy system, and asserting the need for contextualised urban policies. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of urban studies, development planning, urban governance, human settlements, development studies, urban geography, and African studies. It will also be useful for practitioners including town and regional/urban planners, urban policy consultants, and international development cooperation agencies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

There is a need to reduce energy consumption for space cooling and heating via energy efficient solutions/technologies for implementation in the buildings. Thermal energy storage regulates indoor temperature, shifting the peak load to the off-peak hours and reducing the energy need for space cooling and heating. This book presents the most recent advances related to the thermal energy storage system design and integration in buildings. Additionally, modelling, application, synthetization, and characterization of energy efficient building materials are also considered. Features: Provides a deep understanding of thermal energy storage technology and summarizes its utility and feasibility that can be commercially implemented worldwide Covers recent advancements related to thermal energy storage system design and integration in buildings Discusses modelling, application, synthetization, and characterization of energy-efficient building materials Details novel and emerging heat storage materials and their application to energy and environmental processes Highlights the need for future research on building comfort in cooling, heating, and ventilation through a green energy perspective This book is aimed at researchers and graduate students in mechanical, renewable energy, and HVAC engineering.

This book explores the history and development of animal industries in Nordic countries from their establishment in the late nineteenth century to the present day. It charts the manner in which the value of an animal has primarily come to be understood in commercial terms as a commodity and examines how the scale of this industry threatens the sustainability of the entire planet.

The Pedagogies of Re-Use captures the amazing digital gathering of students, academics, practitioners, and activists that happened at the International School of Re-Construction. Involving over 100 people, from countries as far apart as Brazil, Canada, Ireland, UK, Spain, Germany, Greece, UAE, and China, the participants spent two weeks working in eleven teams to consider architectural propositions responding to the current climate and ecological emergency. This book documents the work of the eleven teams, considering the themes they pursued, the student projects proposed, and the final design ideas developed by each group. Supplemented with images of the work, the book also includes leading academics and professionals who supported the school and contribute their voices to these crucial issues of deconstruction, re-use, and adaptation. It is ideal reading for students and academics looking at the issues created by the climate emergency to which architecture must respond. The Pedagogies of Re-Use is part of an EU ERDF £4.33 million Interreg NWE project entitled ‘Facilitating the Circulation of Reclaimed Building Elements’ (FCRBE), Interreg NWE 739, October 2018– December 2023. Online publication: June 2024, London. The FCRBE project aims to increase the amount of reclaimed building elements in circulation within its territory by +50% (in mass) by 2032. http://www.nweurope.eu/fcrbe

Bridge Maintenance, Safety, Management, Digitalization and Sustainability collects the lectures and technical papers presented at the 12th International Conference on Bridge Maintenance, Safety and Management (IABMAS 2024, Copenhagen, Denmark, 24-28 June 2024). This Open Access book contains 480 contributions, including the T.Y. Lin Lecture, 9 Keynote Lectures, and 470 technical papers from 44 countries. The contributions are presented bring together academic and technological developments in Bridge Maintenance, Safety, Management, Digitalization and Sustainability, to solve new and old problems with innovative solutions. Major topics include: advanced bridge design, construction and maintenance approaches, safety, reliability and risk evaluation, life-cycle management, life-cycle resilience, sustainability, standardization, analytical models, bridge management systems, service life prediction, structural health monitoring, non-destructive testing and field testing, robustness and redundancy, durability enhancement, repair and rehabilitation, fatigue and corrosion, extreme loads, needs of bridge owners, whole life costing and investment for the future, financial planning and application of information and computer technology, extensive data analysis and artificial intelligence for bridges, among others. Bridge Maintenance, Safety, Management, Digitalization and Sustainability provides an up-to-date overview of the field of bridge engineering and significant contributions to making more rational decisions on bridge safety, maintenance, management, life-cycle, resilience, sustainability, and bridge innovations to enhance society’s welfare. The Editors hope that this book will serve as a valuable reference to all concerned with bridge structure and infrastructure systems, including engineers, researchers, academics, and students from all areas of bridge engineering.

This open access book brings together concrete analyses from around the world, spanning various scales, that shed light on strategies for implementing essential energy and climate transitions within the broader context of UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) imperatives. Specifically, the book exemplifies the advancement, adaptation, and utilization of energy systems models to address intricate policy issues around pathways to achieve net-zero emissions, enhance energy security, optimize investments, and understand their societal implications. It explores the intricate connections between the SDGs concerning energy, climate action, and other developmental priorities such as employment and economic growth, industrial innovation, urban development, responsible consumption and production, and collaborative partnerships. Organized into four sections, the book illustrates the necessary adjustments of energy system models to guide SDGs, evaluates the role of modeling to advance both renewable energy and energy security, and showcases how energy systems are harnessed to engage with international, national, and local policymakers. This book is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book explores the idea that small island communities could be regarded as canaries in the coal mine of sustainable development because of scientific and anecdotal evidence of a common link between rapid population growth, degradation of the local resource base, and intensification of disputes over the ownership and use of terrestrial and marine resources. The authors are all anthropologists with a specific interest in the question of whether the economic and social 'safety valves' that have previously served to break some of the feedback loops between these trends appear to be losing their efficacy. While much of the debate about economy–society–environment relationships on small islands has been overtaken by a narrow focus on the problem of climate change, the authors show that there are many other factors at work in the transformation of island lives and livelihoods.

This open access volume is a call for ecological awareness and action through communication. It offers perspectives on how we, as humans, posit ourselves in relation to, and as part of, the environment in both verbal and non-verbal discourse. The contributions investigate a variety of situated communicative practices and how they instantiate and potentially influence our actions. Through the frameworks of ecolinguistics, multimodal studies and ecoliteracy, the book discusses how the environmental crisis is communicated as an urgent global and local issue in a variety of media, texts and events. The contributions present a wide range of case studies (including news articles, institutional websites, artwork installations, promotional texts, signposting, social campaigns and other), and they explore how communicative actions can help meet the challenges of ecologically-oriented change. The focus is on the impact that linguistic and multimodal communication can have on acting in, with and towards the environment seen as living ecosystems, or ‘lifescapes’. The chapters offer a reflection on the way we experience, endorse, reframe and resist value systems in ecological communication, and propose alternative and healthier perspectives to respect and preserve the common and nurturing lifescapes through awareness and action. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Urban planning has always been a preeminent instrument of political power. In this volume, contributions from Europe and Latin America provide insight into the functions of planning under very different political and societal constellations over the last hundred years: dictatorships, parliamentary democracies, and illiberalism; capitalism and state socialism; state interventionism and neoliberalism; societies in times of peace and societies marked by colonial, civil, world, or cold wars. The dictatorships of the 1920s and 1930s made extensive use of the potential of planning for economic growth, for brutal repression, but also for the integration of certain population groups and as an effective means of propaganda. The legacy of these dictatorships still characterizes many European cities today and confronts planning with complex tasks. Dictatorial state socialism planned to establish a new social order with a particular technocratic rationality, which did not, however, cancel completely the tendential autonomy of the professional planning sphere. Parliamentary democracies and illiberal regimes have developed specific new practices of using planning to rebuild cities in the interests of neoliberal economic growth and populistic legitimization of power. Histories of Urban Planning and Political Power takes the next steps in significantly expanding our understanding of planning and politics. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of urbanism, urban/town planning, spatial planning, spatial politics, urban development, urban policies, and planning history and European history of the 20th century. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This timely book focuses on an overview of the fundamentals behind high-performance workplaces underpinning occupants’ satisfaction, health, and productivity. To this end, it covers human, environmental, and organisational aspects proven to be of great relevance to the design of high-performance workplaces. Perhaps most significantly it looks at these characteristics both before and after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. From the exodus from private offices to the rise of open-plan workplaces, where, how and when people work was changing rapidly pre-COVID. Post-COVID, pandemic-imposed restrictions banished workers from offices into their homes fast, leaving organisation scrambling to keep workers functioning away from HQ. After the immediate shockwaves set by the pandemic, workers and organisations have had the time to learn about positives and negative aspects of remote working with the vast majority now questioning the need to go back to HQ and the purpose of offices. In this book, the contributors share and discuss lessons learned from research conducted in workplaces pre- and post-2020 with a view of providing a clear picture about what high-performance workplaces are about, including the key drivers behind workers’ satisfaction, health, and productivity. This handbook builds on a programme of applied research conducted in workplaces led by the editors over the last decade which is aimed at understanding the synergies between the design, performance, and experience of spaces. It examines ergonomics, biophilic design, acoustics, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, diversity, leadership, psychological safety, culture, and much more. Research findings are presented side-by-side with case studies selected from the research database led by the editors. Industry experts add to the academic voice, reinforcing the authenticity of this book and its relevance to other stakeholders found outside the academic arena, including the property and design industry, students, government, and the community in general.

As a result of global warming, extreme events, such as firestorms and flash floods, pose increasingly unpredictable and uncertain existential threats, taking lives, destroying communities, and wreaking havoc on habitats. Current aesthetic, technological and scientific frameworks struggle to imagine, visualise and rehearse human interactions with these events, hampering the development of proactive foresight, readiness and response. This open access book demonstrates how the latest advances in creative arts, intelligent systems and climate science can be integrated and leveraged to transform the visualisation of extreme event scenarios. It reframes current practice from passive perception of pre-scripted illustrations to active immersion in evolving life-like interactive scenarios that are geo-located. Drawing on the multidisciplinary expertise of leaders in the creative arts, climate sciences, environmental engineering, and intelligent systems, this book examines the waysin which climate disaster preparedness can be reformulated through practices that address dynamic and unforeseen interactions between climate and human life worlds. Grouped into four sections (picturing, narrating, rehearsing, and communicating), this book maps this approach by exploring the emerging strengths and current limitations of each discipline in addressing the challenge of envisioning the unpredictable interaction of extreme events with human populations and environments. This book provides a timely intervention into the global discourse on how art, culture and technology can address climate disaster resilience. It appeals to readers from multiple fields, offering academic, industry and community audiences novel insights into a profound gap in the current knowledge, policy and action landscape.

This open access book showcases innovative collaborations between the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines to benefit European mobility policy. Each chapter has been researched by a team encompassing both social and technical expertise. The book presents nine policy recommendations aimed at enhancing mobility and logistics. It will interest anyone involved in researching, developing, implementing, or evaluating mobility and logistics policy at local, national, or international levels. It is also valuable for those seeking to expand the use of interdisciplinary research to achieve sustainability goals. Part of a three-volume collection covering climate, energy, and mobility policy.

This open access book showcases the innovative practices of Big Earth Data methods through a collection of comprehensive case studies from China to monitor and evaluate indicators for seven SDGs, i.e., zero hunger (SDG 2), clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11), climate action (SDG 13), life below water (SDG 14), life on land (SDG 15), and to analyze the interactions among multiple SDGs indicators. The emphasis on Big Earth Data is highly relevant within the context of growing global challenges. Disaster risk mitigation, climate change, global food security, resource management, and environmental challenges all are interlinked through earth systems and processes that are independent of human constructs. Therefore, these case studies highlight methods and practices of spatial information mining and integrated SDG evaluation, which include evaluating the synergy and trade-off relationships among the SDGs in the context of their correlations; simulating multiple indicators’ interactions in future environmental, economic and social scenarios in the context of their temporal variations; designing integrated evaluations of regional SDGs in the context of experience with the study of multiple indicators. Big Earth Data therefore has the potential to support informed policy and decision support at global, regional, and local scales.

This open access book foregrounds novel collaborations between the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, for the benefit of European energy policy. Each chapter has been led by a team spanning social and technical disciplines. The book proposes 10 policy recommendations to: Simplify the uptake of community energy; Prioritise societal engagement in geothermal; Create co-learning for energy communities; Facilitate energy literacy; Support place-based strategies for retrofit; Promote integrated policy design for agrivoltaics; Increase social acceptability of low-carbon technologies; Protect digital energy infrastructure; Understand stakeholder perceptions of energy-efficiency measures; and Rethink energy system models to support the just transition. It will be of interest to anyone developing, implementing or critiquing energy policy (locally, nationally or internationally) as well as those looking to expand the use of interdisciplinary research to achieve sustainability goals. Part of a three-volume collection covering climate, energy, and mobility policy.

This open-access book foregrounds 10 novel collaborations between the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, for strengthening European climate policy. Part of a three-volume collection covering climate, energy, and mobility policy.

This open access book showcases the innovative practices of Big Earth Data methods through a collection of global comprehensive case studies to monitor and evaluate indicators for seven SDGs, i.e., zero hunger (SDG 2), clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11), climate action (SDG 13), life below water (SDG 14), life on land (SDG 15), and to analyzes the interactions among multiple SDGs indicators. The emphasis on Big Earth Data is highly relevant within the context of growing global challenges. Disaster risk mitigation, climate change, global food security, resource management, and environmental challenges all are interlinked through earth systems and processes that are independent of human constructs. Therefore these case studies highlight methods and practices of spatial information mining and integrated SDG evaluation, which include evaluating the synergy and trade-off relationships among the SDGs in the context of their correlations; simulating multiple indicators’ interactions in environmental, economic, and social scenarios in the context of their temporal variations; designing integrated evaluations of regional SDGs in the context of experience with the study of multiple indicators. Big Earth Data therefore has the potential to support informed policy and decision support at global, regional, and local scales.

This open access book presents the evaluation of undiscovered oil and gas resources and reserves growth in 468 basins around the world, as well as the potential of unconventional recoverable resources of seven types, including shale oil, heavy oil, oil sands, oil shale, shale gas, coalbed methane, and tight gas. The evaluation methods used are innovative, incorporating both conventional and unconventional oil and gas resources evaluation methods that utilize plays as the fundamental evaluation unit based on various exploration maturity levels. The evaluation results obtained independent intellectual property rights and provide an overview of the future exploration potential and prospects of different regions. It is a valuable reference for researchers, practitioners, and students involved in petroleum exploration.

The aim of this book is to promote the dynamic resilience of societies by identifying, analysing, and exemplifying the role of space and land use in both anticipated and unanticipated primary and secondary crisis situations. The book brings together the expertise of a unique team of researchers and methods from fields of futures studies, land use planning, social sustainability and wellbeing, architecture, spatial planning, design and real estate economics, and presents a novel understanding of the direct and indirect impacts of possible crises in the space and land use context. It goes on to discuss the concept of resilience and exemplifies potential solutions and offers a holistic and forward-looking approach for crisis management through a lens of social sustainability and wellbeing, making an important contribution to the promotion of wellbeing in the built environment, especially in terms of land and residential space and building use. This book does not only identify barriers and successful incentives in resilient crisis management but also discusses the role of different stakeholders (e.g., households, office workers, real estate owners, space occupants, firms, the public sector, etc.) in crisis management. Finally, international case studies aiming to tackle the challenging landscape of future threats are presented, along with novel tools to support the development of future policies, regulations, and management practices in the built environment, which can increase the dynamic resilience of societies. Overall, this book is essential reading for decision-makers in the public and private sectors, urban developers, space and spatial designers, architects, planners, community stakeholders, real estate investors, facility managers and crisis and corporate responsibility managers.

This open access book engages with the difficulties of delivering community energy in practice, building on practical experiences in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mozambique. In these countries, where many people lack access to electricity, community energy is an alternative to advance universal energy access. This book argues that, besides providing access, community energy is essential for achieving justice and resilience in sustainable energy transitions. Community energy combines off-grid infrastructures with innovative forms of governance to incorporate the perspectives of beneficiaries in the generation and distribution of electricity. Community energy has multiple benefits for communities, such as facilitating the adoption of renewable technologies, providing energy access where it is lacking, and building resilience. They also offer societal benefits beyond beneficiary communities, such as providing additional capacity to existing grids, delivering off-grid services where the grid is absent, and bridging on-grid and off-grid systems. Despite its promises, however, the adoption of community energy has been slow. This book presents a feminist-informed perspective on community energy to advance energy justice that puts disadvantaged communities at the centre of sustainable energy transitions. It also explores the room for manoeuvre within existing regulatory systems, supply chains, and delivery systems to facilitate its development. By engaging with existing experiences in community energy, the book demonstrates the potential of communities to gain control over their energy needs and resources and argues for the need to develop a wide range of transdisciplinary skills among policymakers, technicians and communities to deliver a just energy transition.

This open access book describes in detail what life on this planet would be like if its average surface temperature were to rise 3 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level. On this basis, the book argues that it is imperative to keep this temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. It then lays out a detailed plan of what politically feasible, cost-effective measures should now be taken to achieve this goal. In this context, the book provides detailed discussions of climate finance, climate education and nature-based solutions. The book has been translated into English from the original German version published in 2022, and contains an original foreword and preface.

Die Klimakrise und Landnutzung sind eng miteinander verwoben und betrifft uns alle. Die Landnutzung bietet aber ein großes PotenTial zur Bewältigung der Klimakrise. Wie können diese PotenTiale im Sinne einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung genutzt werden, die ganzheitlich die gesellschaftlichen und natürlichen Dimensionen berücksichtigt? Dies ist ein Open-Access-Buch. Landökosysteme erbringen verschiedene unersetzbare Ökosystemleistungen für die Gesellschaft, wie etwa Nahrungsmittel oder Schutz vor Naturgefahren. Sie können eine hohe Artenvielfalt haben, sie absorbieren und speichern Kohlenstoff und bilden die Grundlage für wirtschaftliche Aktivitäten. Die Landnutzung erhöht die Erbringung mancher Ökosystemleistungen auf Kosten anderer und birgt daher Zielkonflikte. Die landbasierte Produktion, die Produktverarbeitung und der Konsum verursachen Treibhausgasemissionen und Biodiversitätsverluste. Der Klimawandel und die gewählten Anpassungsmaßnahmen verschärfen die Konfliktpotentiale. Es bedarf wissensbasierter und gesellschaftlich akzeptierter politischer Entscheidungen, um die vorhandenen Synergien verschiedener Landnutzungsformen zu nutzen und auszubauen, und gleichzeitig Zielkonflikte und unerwünschte Effekte zu minimieren. Der APCC Special Report: Landnutzung und Klimawandel in Österreich wurde im Bewusstsein der Verflechtungen der Klima- und der Biodiversitätskrise mit geopolitischen Änderungen verfasst. Er dient der Zusammenfassung und Bewertung des gegenwärtigen Wissens zum Thema Landnutzung und Klimawandel und deren Verflechtungen. Es werden die Handlungsoptionen der Anpassung und der Minderung des Klimawandels unter Berücksichtigung von Produktion, gesellschaftlichen Ansprüchen, rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen und dem Konsumverhalten vorgestellt und bewertet. Der Bericht gliedert sich in acht thematische Kapitel und eine Synopsis. Eine technische Zusammenfassung enthält die Kernbotschaften der Kapitel, und die Zusammenfassung für politische Entscheidungsträger bringt die Aussagen des Berichtes in knapper Form zur Kenntnis. Im APCC Special Report kommen 130 Autoren aus vielen wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen zu Wort. Der Bericht wurde in einem offenen und transparenten Begutachtungsprozess von mehr als 50 Personen und Stakeholdern kommentiert.

This open access book provides multidisciplinary perspectives on the potential of agroforestry to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on cocoa production. Against the backdrop of increasingly precarious farmer livelihoods, it focuses on cocoa-agroforestry in Ghana – the second largest producer of cocoa in the world. Taking the reader on a journey across experimental plots and on-farm studies, the book delivers a holistic understanding of cocoa-agroforestry. Chapters examine historical yield and climate interactions, the effects of heat and drought on cocoa plants and the role of differing shade trees on soil fertility, yields, pests and diseases. The book discusses the socioeconomics of shade tree management, including cost-benefits, tree rights and competition for natural resources emphasizing policy implications and recommendations. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to climate-agriculture interactions, the book provides an innovative understanding of agroforestry and perennial cropping systems that goes beyond the Ghanaian cocoa belt. It is of relevance to students, researchers, farmers, practitioners and policymakers working with agroforestry and climate change adaptation. This is an open access book.

Work is central to people’s lives and the course of their life. The opportunities and chances an individual can have in their life are significantly connected to work. Individuals' work is also crucial for organisations, companies and for the whole of society. There is a constant need to make changes and readjustments of working life since these can deeply affect the individual and their employability. To make working lives more healthy, sustainable and attractive, being aware of the measures and changes that can be achieved in practice is of crucial importance. This book bridges the gap between the theories and explanatory models offered in research and actual work environments and workplaces. This book constitutes a theoretical framework that visualises the complexity of working life and increases the knowledge and awareness of individuals, companies, organisations and society regarding different factors and patterns. It aims to support individual reflections and joint discussions into daily operations on the individual, organisational and societal level. This book contains practical tools to use in daily working life that analyse possible risks in the work environment when planning measures and actions for health promotion. These practical tools are derived from the four spheres for action and employability in the SwAge model. Developed by the author, the SwAge model (Sustainable Working Life for All Ages) is a theoretical, explanatory model that explains the complexity of creating a healthy and sustainable working life for all ages. By using the SwAge model as a comprehensible framework, the reader will be able to visualise the complexity of factors that affect and influence whether people are able to and want to participate in working life and in the work environment, thereby contributing to increased employability. Designing Sustainable Working Lives and Environments is an essential read for students, researchers, work environment engineers, ergonomics and human factor specialists, occupational health and safety practitioners, business managers, HR staff, leadership decision-makers and labour union professionals.

This open access book focuses on the energy sector and will make a significant contribution to its continued evolution. For many years, the energy sector has been missing a raison d’etre and now finally there are increased calls for that to be justice. Hence, this book will develop the concept of energy justice and how it needs to be formalised in a new ‘social contract’ with all stakeholders in society. The focus will be on improving legal systems at local, national and international levels while ensuring that justice is a core issue within energy law, the legal system and more broadly in society.

This open access book offers a comprehensive exploration of the digital innovations that have emerged in recent years for the circular built environment. Each chapter is meticulously crafted to ensure that both academic readers and industry practitioners can grasp the inner workings of each digital technology, understand its relevance to the circular built environment, examine real-life implementations, and appreciate the intriguing business models behind them. Our primary objective is to blend scholarly knowledge with practical inspiration by providing real-life case studies for each innovation. The authors, who possess extensive expertise in their respective fields, have contributed chapters dedicated to digital technologies within their areas of specialization. The book is organized into three distinct parts. The first part focuses on data-driven digital technologies and delves into how their capabilities can facilitate the transition to a circular built environment. Essential aspects such as building information modeling (BIM), digital twins, geographical information systems (GIS), scanning technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), data templates, and material passports are explored as vital tools for data collection, integration, and analysis in the context of circular construction. In the second part, various digital technologies for design and fabrication are introduced. Topics covered include computational design algorithms, additive and subtractive manufacturing, robotic manufacturing, and extended reality. These discussions shed light on how these technologies can be leveraged to enhance design and fabrication processes within the circular built environment. Finally, the last part of the book presents emerging digital concepts related to business and governance. It explores the role of deconstruction and reverse logistics, blockchain technology, digital building logbooks, and innovative business models as enablers of circularity inthe built environment. The book concludes with a chapter dedicated to digital transformation and its potential to propel the built environment towards a regenerative future. In addition to the substantive content, the book features forewords and perspectives from esteemed experts, providing valuable economic and creative insights to complement its comprehensive approach.

This book explores the making, unmaking and remaking of social infrastructure in ‘left-behind places’. Such places, typically once flourishing industrial communities that have been excluded from recent economic growth, now attract academic and policy attention as sites of a political backlash against globalisation and liberal democracy. The book focuses on the role of social infrastructure as a key component of this story. Seeking to move beyond a narrowly economistic of reading ‘left behind places’, the book addresses the understudied affective dimensions of ‘left-behindness’. It develops an analytical framework that emphasises the importance of place attachments and the consequences of their disruption; considers ‘left behind places’ as ‘moral communities’ and the making of social infrastructure as an expression of this; views the unmaking of social infrastructure through the lens of ‘root shock’; and explains efforts at remaking it in terms of the articulation of ‘radical hope’. The analysis builds upon a case study of a former mining community in County Durham, North East England. Using mixed methods, it offers a ‘deep place study’ of a single village to understand more fully the making, unmaking and remaking of social infrastructure. It shows how a place once richly endowed with social infrastructure, saw this endowment wither and the effects this had on the community. However, it also records efforts of the local people to rebuild social infrastructure, typically drawing the lessons of the past. Although the story of one village, the methods, results and policy recommendation have much wider applicability. The book will be of interest to researchers, policy makers and others concerned with the fate of ‘left behind places’.

This open access book brings together 16 specially commissioned chapters drawn from a range of different professional-practitioner and academic global perspectives on the importance of the relationship between people and green and blue spaces. It focuses on issues surrounding the importance of natural environments on public health and wellbeing, and the environmental, cultural, and social importance of green and blue spaces that can result through responsible and sustainable adaptive management processes. It explores how the Covid-19 pandemic forced reconsiderations of our relationship with these natural spaces and highlights the important impact of the pace of climate change. While not pretending to have the answers, the stimulating and imaginative contributions embrace rich perspectives drawn from backgrounds as diverse as heritage studies, tourism, conservation, geography, policy formulation, public health, environmental health, research methods, history, literature, art, and theology.

This open access book includes a selection of innovative contributions presented at the 4th international conference “Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions 2022”, held in Bolzano, Italy in July 2022. Featuring 10 papers by academics and consultants, strongly rooted in practical experiences and international projects, it discusses current ground-breaking research in innovative and sustainable planning for cities, with a focus on the environmental, economic, and social challenges associated with the global sustainability transition and energy systems integration. The contributions are illustrative of the richness of the issues discussed and the breadth of the emerging themes, including innovative business models for building and infrastructure at district level, integrated sustainability assessment schemes for Positive Energy Districts, a material flow accounting model for regional metabolism, energy communities as a lever to promote historical and landscape values, optimized and electrified last-mile logistics, multi-criteria decision analysis tools to redefine center/periphery relationships, a framework for socio-spatial analysis related to social practices, design principles and communication technologies improving both indoor and outdoor public spaces, augmented nature-based solution coupling the green elements with the latest technologies to deliver healthier and more appealing cities.

This open access book focuses on how scientific methodologies can help industrial managers, entrepreneurs and policymakers handle the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in an efficient and realistic way. It also offers an operative scheme for scientists to overcome their discipline barriers. Is interdisciplinarity an intrinsic research value or is it merely instrumental for handling the increasing flux of open problems that sustainability poses to science?Can these problems of sustainability be solved with what the authors already know? Is it just a matter of having the right people at the table and giving them sufficient resources, or is it something more? Is meeting the needs of the present without compromising those of future generations a scientific definition of sustainable development? Questions similar to those posed in the sixties regarding complexity must be asked about sustainability today. In addition, the new data science includes powerful tools for making novelquantitative predictions about future sustainability indicators, an open problem that the book discusses. This book is primarily addressed to Ph.D. students, postdocs and senior researchers in the Life and Hard Science (LHS) and Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) disciplines, as well as professionals of the primary, secondary and tertiary industrial sectors.

This open access book examines places on the margins and the dynamics through which a marginal position of a place is created. Specifically, it explores how places, mostly in sparsely populated areas, often perceived as immobile and frozen in time, come into being and develop through interference of everyday mobilities and creative practices that cut across the spheres of culture and nature as usually defined. Through fieldwork and case studies from areas in Iceland, Finland, Greenland, and Scotland, the book’s twelve chapters draw out the multiple relations through which places emerge, where people compose their lives as best they can with their surroundings. A special concern is to explore the links between travelling, landscape, and material culture and how places and margins are enacted through mobilities and creative practices of humans and other beings. The emphasis on mobility disturbs the perception of a place as a bounded entity and offers a useful and necessary understanding of places as mobile and fluid. Mobilities on the Margins is a novel and timely contribution to the exploration of human and more-than-human interactions in a world of increasingly fluid mobilities and insistent crises.

This open access book considers that the Central and South Asian region sits at the middle of geographical, geopolitical, economic and historical cross-roads. Since the independence of the Central Asian states in the 1990s, following the demise of the Soviet Union, and emergence of regional trade and political ties means that the region’s evolution has also been subject to common drivers – external and internal, opening up some new opportunities. The long-term social and economic success of the region depends on how water, energy, and food security is achieved at a regional scale that combines Central Asia and South Asia, which are typically treated separately in policy and scholarly works. This book considers how securing the “Nexus” of water, energy, and food resources serves as a starting point for utilizing emerging region-wide opportunities. It does so by identifying the present state of play, deeply analyzing cross-cutting drivers (e.g., climate change, poverty, environmentalcrises and urbanization) and offering insights into possible solutions. The book offers an in-depth rationale for why dealing with this region as a whole makes sense; it is then divided into four sections: The first section, entitled “A Regional Overview,” establishes the basic facts around the state of water, energy, and food resources; this section is meant to serve as the foundation upon which further exploration and analysis is built. The second section turns its attention to “Regional Issues” and unpacks the Nexus into water–energy and water–food relationships. It also investigates how regional trade and coping mechanisms for environmental crises might inform the policies on the Nexus. The section includes a sampling of success and failure stories around implementation of the Nexus policies and strategies in the Central and South Asian region. The third section undertakes an analysis of the “Cross-Cutting Themes for Nexus Security” by investigating all the major drivers of policy and development strategies in the region: climate change, urbanization, poverty, sharing of resources across borders, and gender-based disparities. The fourth and final section uses the discussion throughout the book to formulate “An Integrated Narrative” around the Nexus. It explores how the new global development framework in the form of Sustainable Development Goals might offer a new perspective for achieving the Nexus security in the region. There is an argument that the Nexus security ties in with achievement of long-term peace and security. A final wrap-up chapter gazes into the crystal ball to test out some future scenarios – both positive and negative.

This open access book analyzes the regulation and governance of gene editing in the global agrifood system as applications of gene editing, regulations and the intellectual property landscape continue to evolve. The primary focus of the manuscript is the dynamic interactions between regulatory frameworks and agricultural applications of gene editing in plant breeding. The goal is to give readers a holistic perspective on why the status of gene editing in agricultural applications is in a state of flux in some jurisdictions (e.g., the European Union) while more settled in others (e.g., Canada). Readers are provided with a clearer picture of what the future might hold for the use of gene editing in agriculture as a means to address food insecurity as the climate crisis grows and amid global geopolitical and economic turbulence.

This open access book is a comprehensive exploration of European hydrogen policy, examining its development at both the EU level and in key Member States, while also considering the geopolitical implications of the emerging hydrogen landscape. The editors begin by framing Europe's position within the global hydrogen economy and present an analytical framework for assessing EU and Member State strategies within this context. The book delves into the evolution of EU hydrogen policy since the launch of its hydrogen strategy in 2020, shedding light on significant developments and how they have been influenced by events like Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It then proceeds with in-depth chapters dedicated to key EU Member States and Norway. Each country chapter examines domestic and international hydrogen policies, offering insights into important stakeholder interests, as well as the broader energy and foreign policy considerations shaping the evolving policy landscape. Special attention is given to the international dimension of these strategies, encompassing bilateral and multilateral engagements. In the final chapter, the editors analyze the diverse national strategies and their drivers and discuss their implications for the development of a European hydrogen economy and the role of the EU as a major global player in this market. By examining the variations across Member States, the book provides valuable insights into the factors influencing progress in the hydrogen sector, both in Europe and globally. This book is a resource for policymakers, researchers, and industry professionals seeking a comprehensive understanding of European hydrogen policy and its geopolitical implications. It illuminates the complex dynamics between EU-level strategies and the approaches adopted by individual Member States, ultimately contributing to a broader comprehension of Europe's position within the global hydrogen arena.

This open access book provides a review of the serious limitations and drawbacks to nuclear power, and clearly conveys why nuclear power is a less than desirable option in terms of addressing climate change. It uses accessible and engaging language to help bring an understanding of the issues with nuclear power to a broader sector of the public, with the intention of appealing to non-scientists seeking knowledge on the disadvantages of nuclear power as a solution for climate change. The argument is made that while superficially appealing, nuclear power is too costly, fragile, and slow to implement, compared to alternative options such as wind and solar. “As this book shows, to nowadays hold on to Nuclear Energy, a risky and extremely expensive method of create power, just does not make sense any longer.” -- Prof. (em.) Andreas Nidecker, MD, retired academic radiologist, Basel, Switzerland “Datesman and Brugge present evidence that nuclear power is an insecure and unsecureable technology, inherently incompatible with humanity and democracy; it fuels nuclear weapons technology and possession; choosing it would damage our chances at mitigating the climate crisis.” -- Cindy Folkers, MS, Radiation & Health Specialist, Beyond Nuclear “Although the government, industrial, and scientific nexus say it is safe.…I can only think of one word in Navajo "Ina'adlo'" meaning manipulation by the power that be to say it is safe. My Navajo people are dying from the uranium exposure on their health and environment. Great account of information on studies that have taken place around the world to say uranium is not good.” – Esther Yazzie, Navajo Interpreter and knowledge holder on Navajo issues. “At a time when there is a call to triple the growth of nuclear power, Datesman and Brugge provide a timely and thorough examination of the dark-side of “romancing” the atom. With solid technical astuteness, they cover a wide field littered with unsolved and dangerous problems ranging from the poisoning of people and the environment to the failed economics, to the spread of nuclear weapons ….they point out how science and public trust have been corrupted by the lure of unfettered nuclear growth.” –Robert Alvarez, Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

This textbook demonstrates how economic theories can be used for environmental policy evaluations. A notable feature of this book is that, unlike most textbooks in environmental economics written in English, it draws on examples from Japan’s policy on energy, resource, pollution, and carbon emissions. Policy measures discussed in this book include controls on motor vehicle emissions, pricing of waste disposal, deposit-refund scheme for recycling, carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes. With topics involving transboundary environmental concerns such as climate change, air pollution, and waste management and recycling, the book also integrates international perspectives and provides comparisons of policies across regions and countries. A major objective of this book is to present a concise and accessible introduction to environmental economics as applied to policy evaluations in and beyond Japan. The knowledge available from this book must be very useful for students, policymakers and practitioners who seek environmental policy solutions from an economic point of view. This is an open access book.

With climate change and a looming ecological crisis impacting the systems and institutions that support life, this timely publication examines the drivers of ecologically induced genocide – the environmental destruction resulting in conditions of life that fundamentally threaten a social group’s cultural or physical existence. Focusing on the former British colonies of Kenya and Australia, both united by a discourse of developmentalism, the book draws attention to the critical role that the destructions of ecologies has historically played, and continues to play, in the genocide of Indigenous and place-based peoples. It synthesises radical political ecology with a political-economic approach to illuminate the nexus between the inherently genocidal and ecocidal properties of the capitalist global system and the manner in which the ecocidal logic of capital intersects with settler and post-colonial structures. In exploring the genocidal effects of climate governance and market environmentalism on Indigenous peoples in Kenya and forms of energy extraction on Indigenous groups in Australia, the book also draws on original interviews to prioritise the lived experiences of, and give voice to, the groups that have suffered structural violence and social harms. Fundamentally, it puts forward a political economy of genocide, which seeks to explain the manner in which material forces, on local and global scales, underpin and give rise to ever-evolving relations of genocide. As such, this important book deepens and enriches our knowledge of genocide and the eco-genocidal nature of colonisation, and the capitalist mode of production that underpins developmentalism.

For a company, managing its social and environmental performance is no longer just a matter of reducing its impact; it must also be able to assess its contribution to resolving or aggravating social and environmental problems. This book argues that the current work on accounting for sustainability has not yet given organisations a tool to integrate their performance within the planetary and social framework that conveys actual "planetary and social budgets", and that business organisations lack the possibility to go beyond incremental performance measurement. It offers an in‑depth examination of multi‑capital accounting, which has already been integrated within the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and will follow on from sustainability reporting. The LIFTS model (Limits and Foundations Towards Sustainability Accounting Model) used in this book combines various scientific and practical contributions to develop budgets for environmental impacts and social obligations on an organisational scale. It proposes an accounting mechanism that enables an organization to manage each of its budgets and measure variances between forecast and actual. It provides an introduction to the principles of this model and its conditions of application and describes its implementation in numerous companies. While the main audience for the book is academics, advanced students and researchers in accounting for sustainability, business and management and economics, it will also appeal to practitioners, policymakers, national standard setters, think tanks and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Présent dans toute politique environnementale et pourtant s'en distinguant précisément parce qu’il n’est pas ce qui nous entoure mais ce qui existe pour et par lui-même, le vivant ne se laisse pas enfermer par les humains – pas si facilement, dirait-on avec nuance – et c’est cet acte de résistance qui le rend politique.

Dieses Open-Access-Buch beschreibt die Auswirkungen von Klimaveränderungen auf Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in Deutschland. Es liefert eine fundierte, fachübergreifende Grundlage für Entscheidungen im Zusammenhang mit dem Klimawandel. Wie lassen sich die Folgen des Klimawandels abmildern und wie können wir uns vorbereiten? Die hier vorliegende nationale Untersuchung stellt den aktuellen Forschungsstand zum Klimawandel umfassend für alle Themenbereiche und gesellschaftlichen Sektoren dar. Insgesamt 165 Autoren aus dem gesamten deutschsprachigen Raum äußern sich in 39 Kapiteln zu Themen wie bereits beobachtete sowie zukünftige Veränderungen, Wetterkatastrophen und deren Folgen. Erwartungen für die Zukunft, Chancen und Risiken sowie mögliche Anpassungsstrategien werden greifbar, offene Fragestellungen benannt. Fünf Kapitel zu Minderungs- und Null-Emissions-Strategien zeigen weitere mögliche Auswege aus der Situation auf. Die Texte sind in verständlicher Sprache geschrieben und die wichtigsten Gedanken durch Grafiken und Tabellen veranschaulicht. Alle Beiträge wurden mehrfach wissenschaftlich begutachtet. Mit der 2., überarbeiteten und erweiterten Auflage von Klimawandel in Deutschland wurde die erste Gesamtschau zu dem Themenkomplex aus dem Jahr 2017 aktualisiert und verbessert, sieben Kapitel kamen neu hinzu. Das Werk richtet sich vorrangig an eine Leserschaft mit einem Grundverständnis von klimarelevanten Fragen. Fachleute aller Disziplinen, die im Zusammenhang mit ihren beruflichen Tätigkeiten auf den Klimawandel reagieren müssen, etwa aus der öffentlichen Verwaltung, der Politik und dem Wirtschaftsleben, erhalten grundlegende Informationen und Handlungsanregungen.

The study of marine environments inevitably involves considering the problem of marine pollution, which includes questions that focus on the essential need to ensure the long-term health of these exceptional ecosystems and the lives and livelihoods they support. The open access textbook "Marine Pollution: monitoring, management and mitigation" approaches these questions in a practical and highly readable format. It gives newcomers to the field background and perspective through the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary exploration of the topic. The topic is indeed complex, requiring the integration of the natural sciences and chemistry with management, policymakers, industry and all of us who are users of the marine environment. The textbook was written by leading experts to especially prepare graduates for a career in marine pollution studies. At the same time, it is relevant for anyone invested in the marine environment with a will to reduce their impacts. The chapters can easily be used independently and are also connected through the cross-referencing of related content. The introductory chapter provides a historical account of marine pollution and explores the fundamental physicochemical conditions of seawater. Two full chapters cover the requisite resources for ensuring success in field and laboratory studies. Then, chapter by chapter the book dives into to the various types of marine pollutants. In closing, it discusses the challenges of understanding multiple stressors and presents mitigation and restoration practices, along with a global overview of marine pollution legislation. We envisioned this textbook as being open access for the very reason we created it: this topic calls for global contributions and champions, and financial restraints should not limit access to this knowledge.

Using the Isar River – a river system perceived as wild but highly technically regulated – as an example, we explored at the Department of Landscape Architecture + Open Space Planning (TU Berlin) in 2019 – how to develop strategies for Anthropocene natures. The challenge was to develop narratives, design strategies, and action programs in the new geochronological epoch of the Anthropocene that focuses on the increasingly complex and inextricably interwoven human-nature-technology relationships – and thus addressing future fields of landscape architecture. Key theoretical texts from different schools of thought such as actor-network theory, urban-rural metabolism, and ethnological approaches to cosmologies attuned us to the task, as well as in-depth studies of the Isar river system on site. The result is an inspiring range of designs. These include the “Isar Gschichten”, in which physical interventions at a reservoir or a garbage mountain make their imprint as natural-cultural assemblages perceptible as an aesthetic experience. The design "Phosphor Mining Munich" shows how the phosphorus cycle can be closed locally between a newly developing residential area, a reservoir and the adjacent agriculture in the sense of a circular economy. In the case of the “Fish Loading Station”, fish as non-human actors are placed at the centre of the design. Using the reservoir as an example, the design demonstrates how the Isar can become a better habitat for fish through redesign, without obscuring the technical interventions and instead understanding them as a design feature of the site.

This open access book represents a journey documenting the development of tools and methodologies over 3 decades and asks where the future lies. It further develops seminal work carried out under the auspices of the Capacity building in Sustainability and Environmental Management (CapSEM) project co-funded by the EU Erasmus programme from 2016-2019 as well as research projects such as IGLO-MP2020, SUSPRO, and SISVI. It gathers existing paradigms of environmental management within the relevant frameworks which have driven the way in which this discipline has developed. It seeks to both challenge and support the way in which business sectors have approached this previously, with a more holistic and overarching model being provided, moving through four very distinct levels. It therefore provides not only a different approach, but a different way of thinking. Systems thinking is characterized by four levels: Process, Product Value Chain, Organisational and Systemic which combines Material Flow Analysis (MFA), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Industrial Ecology (IE) principles. In its practical application, Corporate Social Responsibility, for example, thus becomes an integral part of a much wider business strategy and impacts on all business activity, not added value for its own sake, but a valuable component in a wider toolbox as a fundamental part of any business strategy and plan, changing, flexing and developing over the years. The book is divided into 4 parts: moving from context and background, to the theoretical model or toolbox, onto its practical application in case studiesandculminates in looking at the future and potential developments. It represents the multi-disciplined collaboration at NTNU and beyond, exemplifying its use in a wealth of business sectors and a range of stakeholders from construction to textiles to wind power as outlined in the European Circular Action Plan.