Island Press – förlag

An overview of the benefits and services that nature offers to people. The contributors present a detailed synthesis of our current understanding of a suite of ecosystem services and a preliminary assessment of their economic value.

“This book will—no question—make you think in new ways. Why have we surrendered our cities to cars? What might it be like to inhabit a space designed for people instead? It’s exciting and hopeful—this we can do!”—Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, The Cross, and the Station WagonAlmost everywhere in the world, streets are designed for travel at the highest speed, giving precedence to the chunkiest vehicles. We take for granted that the streets outside of our homes are designed only for movement from one point to another. But what happens if we radically rethink how we use these public spaces? Could we change our lives for the better?  In Movement: How to Take Back Our Streets and Transform Our Lives, journalist Thalia Verkade and mobility expert (“the cycling professor”) Marco te Brömmelstroet take a three-year shared journey of discovery into the possibilities of our streets. They investigate and question the choices and mechanisms underpinning how these public spaces are designed and look at how they could be different. Verkade and te Brömmelstroet draw inspiration from the Netherlands and look at what other countries are doing, and could do, to diversify how they use their streets and make them safer.  During the pandemic, decision-makers in cities around the world were confronted with the questions of who our streets belong to, how we want to use them, and who gets to decide. Making our communities safer, cleaner, and greener starts with asking these fundamental questions. To truly transform mobility, we need to look far beyond the technical aspects and put people at the center of urban design. Movement will change the way that you view our streets.

"Biophilia" is the term coined by Edward O. Wilson, author of The Diversity of Life and winner of two Pulitzer prizes, to describe what he believes is our innate affinity for the natural world. In his landmark book Biophilia, he examined how our tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes might be a biologically based need, integral to our development as individuals and as a species. The idea has caught the imagination of diverse thinkers. The Biophilia Hypothesis brings together the views of some of the most creative scientists of our time, each attempting to amplify and refine the concept of biophilia. The various perspectives - psychological, biological, cultural, symbolic, and aesthetic - frame the theoretical issues by presenting empirical evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis. Numerous examples illustrate the idea that biophilia and its converse, biophobia, have a genetic component: people develop fear and even full-blown phobias of snakes and spiders with very little negative reinforcement, while more threatening modern artifacts - knives, guns, automobiles - rarely elicit such a response; people would rather look at water, green vegetation, or flowers than built structures of glass and concrete; and the development of language, myth, and thought appears to be greatly dependent on the use of natural symbols, particularly animals. The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity. More important, it implies serious consequences for our well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world. Relentless environmental destruction could have a significant impact on our quality of life,not just materially but psychologically and even spiritually.

Instream Flow Protection is a comprehensive overview of Western water use and the issues that surround it. The authors explain instream flow and its historical, political, and legal context; describe current instream flow laws and policies; and present methods of protecting instream flow.

The author explains what planners and local officials can learn from the sustainable city movement in Europe. The book draws from extensive European experience, examining progress and policies in innovative cities including Vienna, Helsinki, Stockholm, London, Amsterdam and Berlin.

A comprehensive guide to planning and running effective corporate campaigns to pressure companies to do the right thingMajor corporations exercise enormous control over our lives. They influence how we think, what we buy, who we vote for, and how our society evolves. They are key drivers of the wealth that fuels our economic system, and their power insulates them from strict government regulations and accountability. In this setting, corporate abuses—pollution, toxic and inhumane work environments, defective products—go unchecked. When the government refuses to corral industry’s misdeeds, advocacy groups turn to corporate campaigns to expose and change harmful behavior.Reining in the Bulls is the first comprehensive resource for professionals of nongovernmental organizations who want to understand, plan, and execute modern corporate campaigns. Michael Marx is a pioneer in this field and has led multiple high-profile campaigns, pressuring companies that were harming workers, communities, and the natural environment. He draws from his and other campaign experts’ experience to highlight lessons from both US and international campaigns. Corporate campaigns are unique in that they require knowing how to pressure branded companies and understanding their inner workings to strategically target that pressure.The need for a comprehensive guide is growing. Few advocacy professionals receive training on how to conduct these campaigns effectively. Even those who have worked on corporate campaigns for a while need to evolve their strategies to incorporate advances in social media and the threats posed by new industries, such as AI. There is an urgent need to curb the destructive behavior of corporations, and this book gives advocates a powerful tool for holding companies accountable and protecting our social and environmental well-being.

In this rich and rewarding work, Yi-Fu Tuan vividly demonstrates that feeling and beauty are essential components of life and society. The aesthetic is not merely one aspect of culture but its central core -- both its driving force and its ultimate goal.Beginning with the individual and his physical world, Tuan's exploration progresses from the simple to the complex. His initial evaluation of the building blocks of aesthetic experience (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) develops gradually into a wide-ranging examination of the most elaborate of human constructs, including art, architecture, literature, philosophy, music, and more.