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An oft repeated myth is that Los Angeles is located in the desert. Not true I'm afraid. Las Vegas is built in a desert, as are eastern California cities such as Lancaster or Barstow, but Los Angeles was and is no desert in the strict sense of the word. With an average annual precipitation of 15 inches the city receives almost four times as much rainfall as Las Vegas. Los Angeles is semi-arid in terms of climate, but early accounts suggest many areas were even more verdant than the annual precipitation would indicate. The early Spanish and subsequent Mexican and American accounts suggest that it was anything like a desert when the region was first encountered by Europeans. This is because there were appreciable areas of the Los Angeles basin where artesian waters, sourced from the surrounding hills and mountains, fed springs or kept groundwater levels high during the dry summer months. This produced green woodlands, shrublands and grasslands described in early European accounts. Those conditions helped the region support native peoples such as the Gabrielino/Tongva, Chumash and Fernandeño/Tataviam for many millennia prior to European arrival.   The potential for productive farms and pastures was an inducement for European settlement and until the mid 1950's Los Angeles was one of the highest producing agricultural counties in the nation. El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles (modern Los Angeles) was founded by the Spanish inland on the banks of the Rio Porciúncula (modern Los Angeles River) because this site in the middle of the basin provided ample permanent water fed by surrounding hills and mountains. The natural and agricultural landscapes of Los Angeles are now largely paved over or otherwise erased.   Driving through the lush precincts of Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Las Feliz or the UCLA campus one might accept the alternative myth that the region is a lush tropical realm of fig trees, palms, citrus trees, birds of paradise plants and b

The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social StrugglesEntradax  Farhana Sultana farhana@jonosc.com20:55 (21 horas atrás) para URBGEOG Hello everyone, Apologies for cross-postings and mass email, but a new book has just been published that may be of interest to folks on the list. Details of the book description, table of contents, and reviews are provided below, and as well as the link to the publisher's website for further information. Please feel free to circulate this email to other interested colleagues and institutions. Thanks! Best wishes,Farhana  "The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles" Edited by Farhana Sultana and Alex Loftus Earthscan (Taylor and Francis), UK, 2011 http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9781849713597/  Description: The right to clean water has been adopted by the United Nations as a basic human right. Yet how such universal calls for a right to water are understood, negotiated, experienced and struggled over remain key challenges. The Right to Water elucidates how universal calls for rights articulate with local historical geographical contexts, governance, politics and social struggles, thereby highlighting the challenges and the possibilities that exist. Bringing together a unique range of academics, policy-makers and activists, the book analyzes how struggles for the right to water have attempted to translate moral arguments over access to safe water into workable claims. This book is an intervention at a crucial moment into the shape and future direction of struggles for the right to water in a range of political, geographic and socio-economics contexts, seeking to be pro-active in defining what this struggle could mean and how it might be taken forward in a far broader transformative politics. The Right to Water engages with a range of approaches that focus on philosophical, legal and governance perspectives before seeking to apply these more abstract arguments to an array of conc

The Great Lakes face grave danger as pollution, over-extraction, invasive species, and wetland loss continue to intensify, exacting a devastating toll on the watershed. While beaches close and fisheries decline, private companies are eyeing these precious waters for increased exploitation, whether in the form of additional commercial bottled water export, mining, oil and gas exploration, or control of once public water services. Decades of organizing, advocacy, legal and treaty rights work have made tremendous headway against the threats to the Lakes. These campaigns have slowed the devastation, created higher barriers for abuse, and insisted on public interest in water decisions. But still, the threats to enclose, appropriate and exploit our Great Lakes escalate faster than ever. On the Commons asserts that the many problems we face will not be solved piecemeal or by efforts that focus solely on ecological degradation or social injustice. We will be stymied in creating the future we want if we continue to fight the attacks on the lakes one by one without also developing a transformative vision and ground-breaking strategy. What is called for is a game-changing plan. Our Great Lakes Water Commons Initiative acts as a game changer in multiple ways. First, the Initiative makes an explicit connection between social inequities, disregard of community participation in resource decisions and environmental damage in the Great Lakes region. Such a holistic view is critical to ensuring not only the health and well being of the Lakes, but also the people who live there. For example: When water use decisions are made without community agreement, community members are further excluded from their rightful role in governance and stewardship of vital resources. When water belongs to those who can buy it and not to our communities, the future of every living being is jeopardized. When financially strapped municipalities sell water rights and access rather than prior

JOIN THE GLOBAL ALLIANCE FOR RIGHTS OF NATURE The Global Alliance is a world-wide movement of individuals and organizations creating human communities that respect and defend the rights of Nature. At the core we know that when we disrespect and harm Nature we diminish ourselves and impoverish our children. Societies that do not respect the rights of rivers to flow and forests to grow undermine us all. A human right to life and dignity is meaningless without water and wilderness.

Journal of Environmental Management Volume 91, Issue 1, October 2009, Pages 1-21 doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2009.06.018 | How to Cite or Link Using DOI Cited By in Scopus (73)   Permissions & Reprints Review Recent developments in Life Cycle Assessment Göran Finnvedena, , , Michael Z. Hauschildb, , Tomas Ekvallc, , Jeroen Guinéed, , Reinout Heijungsd, , Stefanie Hellwege, , Annette Koehlere, , David Penningtonf, , Sangwon Suhg,  Purchase a Division of Environmental Strategies Research - fms, Department of Urban Planning and Environment, School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden b Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Produktionstorvet 424, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark c IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, PO Box 5302, SE-400 14 Göteborg, Sweden d Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, PO Box 9518, 2300 RA, The Netherlands e ETH Zurich, Institute of Environmental Engineering, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland f European Commission, Directorate General Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute of Environment and Sustainability (IES), Ispra, Italy g Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resource Sciences, 1390 Eckles Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA Received 11 October 2008; revised 22 May 2009; Accepted 19 June 2009. Available online 29 August 2009. Abstract Life Cycle Assessment is a tool to assess the environmental impacts and resources used throughout a product's life cycle, i.e., from raw material acquisition, via production and use phases, to waste management. The methodological development in LCA has been strong, and LCA is broadly applied in practice. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of recent developments of LCA methods. The focus is on some areas where there has been an intense methodological development during the last years. We also highlight some