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Certificate in Global Environment Challenges Human activity is increasingly changing the natural environment at an unprecedented rate. Humanity faces a range of complex and interrelated challenges: global warming, ecosystem disruption, biodiversity loss, and for many, increasing difficulty in meeting basic human needs for energy, food, water and shelter. As a result, environmental issues are inextricably linked to many aspects of local, regional and global development, health, security and politics. The Postgraduate Certificate in Global Environment Challenges is an online distance learning programme for people working, or or considering a career, at the intersections of policy, real-world practice and/or research in a range of sectors including government, international agencies, NGOs, private sector and academia. Environmental challenges can only be adequately understood and addressed by considering how human activity, intentional or not, drives environmental change. Likewise development and health challenges can not be fully understood and addressed without appreciating their environmental dimensions. The certificate therefore takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on expertise from across and beyond the University to develop participants' knowledge, understanding and skills. The distance learning programme offers a flexible approach to personal and professional development and can be studied around your other commitments, including full time work, from anywhere in the world with internet access. Check out the Global Environment Challenges microsite at http://www.gec.jux.com/   To apply online, please click:  The Courses The Global Environment Certificate programme is delivered as an online distance learning, 60-credit Postgraduate Certificate, comprising the following three 20 credit taught courses: 1. Global Environment Challenges (Core Course) This course introduces the nature and relevance of key environmental challenges. Taking an integ

RSS Text Size Print Share This Va. sites added to refuge plan list Credit: 2006, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Plum Tree Island National Wildlife Refuge in Poquoson was established to protect wetlands and bird habitats. Related Plum Tree Island Wildlife Refuge Conservation Planning Newsletter: James River Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Planning Newsletter: By: ZACHARY REID | Richmond Times-Dispatch  Published: September 09, 2012 » 0 Comments | Post a Comment The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has added two Virginia refuges to its list of sites due for updated 15-year comprehensive conservation plans. The service is actively seeking public input on the plans, which help determine how the sites are managed and how the public is able to use them. Meghan Carfioli, a Charles City County-based natural resource planner for the service, said public input is essential to the process and she hopes refuge users will take advantage of the opportunity for active engagement with staff members. The service is working on plans for the James River and Plum Tree Island national wildlife refuges.

Call For Papers: Conference: Science, Space, and the Environment Location: Smith Centre, Science Museum, LondonDate: Tuesday/Wednesday July 17-18, 2012 Sponsor: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich Organizers: Helmuth Trischler, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich; Ludmilla Jordanova, King's College London Department of History; Simon Werrett, University of Washington Department of History/ Science Studies Network, Seattle; Science Museum, London. Although the sciences have provided critical resources in environmental debates, their own role in environmental change has been little studied. This conference will explore how the sciences have affected the physical environment. How have scientific practices and ideas impacted on nature - for example do practices such as voyages of exploration or natural history collecting exploit plants and animals and their environments? Does scientific activity cause pollution, depletion of resources, or other forms of damage to ecosystems? How are such practices to be evaluated, and how are they related to scientific and other ideas of nature and the environment, e.g. notions of conquest, mastery, or interrogation. How should scientific ideas about the environment be related to the impacts of scientific research on it? In particular papers should address scientific activities involving the circulation of knowledge and materials. A growing body of work in the history of science has explored the issue of circulation, examining how physical specimens, books, people, and materials related to science have been made to move around the globe in the service of producing or disseminating scientific knowledge. What has been the environmental significance of such circulations? How has the movement of people, plants, animals, and scientific instruments, books and personnel affected environments, e.g. on voyages of exploration, in processes of establishing colonial scientific institutions, or in undert

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

Forest Service Patent & Licensing Program Information Pre-Invention Activities: Helps researchers to determine best technology transfer method e.g. (patents vs. publications). Reviews all FS invention disclosures. Prepares invention disclosures for FS Patent Review Committee. Assists with CRADAs and other Technology Transfer related agreements

Following the successful launch of the Low Carbon Energy for Development Network (LCEDN) on the 13th January 2012 in London, the LCEDN will be holding its first major international conference at Loughborough University in the UK on the 4-5th April 2012. The theme of the conference is 'Energy and Development: Learning From The Past' and thanks to support from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the EPSRC we are privileged to be hosting a range of international speakers from across Asia, Africa and Latin America in the specific fields of solar power and bio-energy around which this conference is based; we are also hosting a parallel online event to which we offer an open invite to academics and post-graduates (in the UK initially) who may be interested but would be unable to attend in person. The two-day programme will be divided into sections on: i)      The global context of energy for development ii)     The historical experience of solar power in the global south iii)    The historical experience of bio-energy in the global south iv)     Looking forward through the prisms of: a.      Major Challenges b.      New Technologies c.      Demand Management This conference is the first of three planned for this year so please register your interest even if you are unable to make this one or your specialization lies somewhere else. The conference is directed at any academics/practitioners who are involved in low carbon transitions and energy for development - we are specifically interested in bridging the gap between technologists, engineers and the social sciences and welcome interest from any discipline so long only as they have an interest in energy and development; this could for instance include gender, legal/policy, solar, bio-energy, sociology, anthropology (not an exclusive list). If you would like to attend the conference, please go to the LCEDN website (http://www.lcedn.com/) and click on the '

Roger Williams University Law Review Blowout: Legal Legacy of the Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe: Settle or Sue? The Use and Structure of Alternative Compensation Programs in the Mass Claims Context Winter, 2012 17 Roger Williams U. L. Rev. 97 Author Deborah E. Greenspan* and Matthew A. Neuburger++ Excerpt I. INTRODUCTION   Imagine a major environmental disaster - one that affects property and wildlife over a wide geographic area and leads tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals and businesses to claim billions of dollars in damages for loss of income and activities that are based on use of the damaged property and wildlife. Suppose further that not only are the surrounding communities suffering significant immediate loss, but that there is also no way to measure the long-term effects of the disaster. Chances are that you are envisioning the BP oil spill in April 2010. The event was front-page news for months. Every day, the media catalogued the various methods (many unsuccessful) to contain the spill. Almost immediately after the spill commenced, and months before the well was eventually capped and the flow of oil stopped, individuals, businesses, interest groups, and governmental entities who claimed to be affected by the spill started filing lawsuits. Within weeks, over 200 cases had been filed claiming personal injury, property damage, economic loss, and environmental damage resulting from the oil spill, many of them on behalf of classes of thousands of individuals and/or entities. 1 The litigation picture was and is extraordinarily complex and the claimants and defendant companies involved almost certainly will be embroiled in litigation for years. The cases claim damages measuring in the billions and involve complex issues of liability and causation, and daunting issues of proving and measuring long-term damage and loss. This situation highlights both ...  

ECOMOVE is a non-profit-organisation active both at a German and international level, which supports and promotes audio-visual media dealing with environment and sustainable development. ECOMOVE organises film events, curates film series, carries out educational projects and provides supporting services.  ECOMOVE is based on the co-operation of various international environmental film festivals. -> About Us                                               -> Projects                                                                       -> ECOMOVE Member Festivals                    -> Service

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 PLATFORM OF SOLUTIONS  JOIN THE 1,000 ACTIVE MEMBERS  AND SHARE YOUR SOLUTIONS  WITH THE WORLD The 6th World Water Forum in Marseille will be the Forum of Solutions. The online platform Solutions for Water was developed for everyone to take part and to enable the sharing of solutions on the widest scale possible. Today the Platform of Solutions counts over 1,000 active members. Since its launch in August 2011 there have been nearly 20,000 visitors from 154 countries - approximately 500 per day. Nearly 900 solutions have already been submitted and numbers are growing from day to day. We are proud to announce that a new version of the platform has been launched, with an updated set of functionalities such as saving a solution before submitting, an advanced search system, including geolocation… Also included in the new more dynamic user-interface is a social media sharing system. Members can thus easily exchange ideas and network with each other, to ultimately meet-up in real life during the 6th World Water Forum week in March. With this interactive tool people from all horizons can propose and access concrete and practical solutions. It was designed to receive all types of contributions, whether for finance, governance, education or communication purposes… It will also help foster and secure the necessary commitments for their implementation and upscaling throughout the world. All the solutions submitted via the platform will be put forward in various ways during the Forum week. Share your solutions with the world!  solutionsforwater.org

NARRATIVES OF SELF AND RELATEDNESS IN ECO-COMMUNES Resistance against normalized individualization and the nuclear family Preview Buy now DOI:10.1080/14616690902764757 Kirsi Erärantaa*, Johanna Moisanderb & Sinikka Pesonenb pages 347-367 Available online: 19 Jun 2009 Alert me ABSTRACT This paper focuses on eco-communes as sites of resistance and political activism. Based on a post-structuralist narrative analysis of interview materials, this paper elaborates on the ways in which life in a commune is narrated and represented as an identity project with a mission to bring about social change. The environmentalists studied make sense of their choice to live in an eco-commune as something that was triggered and facilitated by important crossroads and fateful moments that they had encountered in their past life. They also work on their identity as eco-communards by discursively problematizing their personal relation to themselves (self) and to others (spouse and family), as well as by constructing new forms of subjectivity, intimacy, and relatedness through communal life. Life in the eco-commune thus represents a form of resistance and political struggle that Michel Foucault has referred to as politics of self; it represents not only direct opposition against the social order of contemporary Western consumer society but also more subtle resistance against the normalized forms of subjectivity that it

Using planetary science to shape economics By Oliver Greenfield - Green Economy Coalition - September, 2011 Six big ideas for a green infrastructure capable of protecting people and future generations Economic theory (and common sense) tells us that when something is valuable, and it is free, its use tends to infinity - this explains why trees, biodiversity, freshwater and atmospheric space for carbon are all being used 'like there is no tomorrow'. It also assumes that when something is exhausted (or too expensive), a substitute is almost certain to be found. Economic theory then takes this substitution concept up to a macro level and thinks of the 'trade-off' between environment and economy. The logic is that we can have 'more environment' if we are prepared to put up with 'less economy', or we can have 'less environment' if we want a bigger economy. The traditional economic world view that dominates the political spectrum is based on infinite resources, substitution, and ultimately this trade-off between environment and economy. If the rationale behind our economic system is based on some of these assumptions, then it seems fitting for us to explore whether the planet can indeed support these assumptions. Let us take a quick journey into planetary science. Back to basics Gravitational forces, generated both by the earth orbiting the sun and the moon orbiting the planet, create movement and flow of magma, collision of tectonic plates and surfacing of minerals. These minerals are weathered and distributed across the earth's surface, primarily by water. The constant heating and cooling created by the earth's rotation accelerates the chemical reactions between newly released minerals (soils and rocks) and atmospheric gases. These chemical reactions are the pool from which life emerged, creating single cells capable of using minerals and energy from the sun to photosynthesise; generating proteins for their own growth, and respiring to br

Resources, Conservation and Recycling Volume 53, Issue 8, June 2009, Pages 434-447 doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2009.03.013 | How to Cite or Link Using DOI Cited By in Scopus (56)   Permissions & Reprints Energy- and greenhouse gas-based LCA of biofuel and bioenergy systems: Key issues, ranges and recommendations Francesco Cherubinia, , , Neil D. Birda, Annette Cowieb, Gerfried Jungmeiera, Bernhard Schlamadingerc, 1, Susanne Woess-Gallascha Purchase a Joanneum Research, Elisabethstraße 5, 8010 Graz, Austria b Forest Resources Research, New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, P.O. Box 100, Beecroft 2119, Australia c TerraCarbon, Dr. Eckenerstraße 21b, 8043 Graz, Austria Received 21 July 2008; revised 19 December 2008; Accepted 3 March 2009. Available online 7 May 2009. Abstract With increasing use of biomass for energy, questions arise about the validity of bioenergy as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology able to reveal these environmental and energy performances, but results may differ even for apparently similar bioenergy systems. Differences are due to several reasons: type and management of raw materials, conversion technologies, end-use technologies, system boundaries and reference energy system with which the bioenergy chain is compared. Based on review of published papers and elaboration of software data concerning greenhouse gas and energy balances of bioenergy, other renewable and conventional fossil systems, this paper discusses key issues in bioenergy system LCA. These issues have a strong influence on the final results but are often overlooked or mishandled in most of the studies available in literature. The article addresses the following aspects: recognition of the biomass carbon cycle, including carbon stock changes in biomass and soil over time; inclusion of nitrous oxide and methane emissions from agricultural activities; selection of the appro

the commons movement The commons is what we share together. From parks and clean water to scientific knowledge and the Internet, some things are no one's private property. They exist for everyone's benefit, and must be protected for future generations. A movement is emerging today to create a commons-based society. What is On The Commons? On the Commons is a citizens' network that highlights the importance of the commons in our lives, and promotes innovative commons-based solutions to create a brighter future.