The State Of The Nation S Ecosystems

We all rely on a familiar set of indicators - interest rates, unemployment, inflation, the Dow Jones index, and GDP, for example - to gauge the performance of national economies. No such measures are currently available to describe the environment. This book lays out a blueprint for periodic reporting on the condition and use of ecosystems in the United States. Developed by experts from businesses, environmental organizations, universities, and federal, state, and local government agencies, it is designed to provide policymakers and the general public with a succinct and comprehensive - yet scientifically sound and non-partisan - view of 'how we are doing'. This book should prove invaluable for decision makers in natural resource management and environmental policy in government and environmental organizations, businesses, and trade associations; academics with a research or teaching interest in environmental issues; and the general public interested in the continued well-being of American ecosystems.

This book is a collection of papers from the OECD meeting on Agri-biodiversity Indicators held jointly with the EU and international organisations. A key outcome was to establish a common agri-biodiversity framework that helps understand the complexity of agri-biodiversity linkages.

Ecosystem accounting is a relatively new and emerging field dealing with integrating complex biophysical data, tracking changes in ecosystems and linking those changes to economic and other human activity. There is an increasing urgency to advance this emerging field of statistics on ecosystems.

"A bold shot across the bow of orthodoxy where conceptions of world order are concerned, Original Nation Approaches to Inter-National Law is sure to stimulate reconsideration of a range of past assumptions regarding the legitimacy and even the viability of the prevailing statist system of global dominion. In offering clear alternatives, this book is not only timely but urgently needed." --Ward Churchill, author of Struggle for the Land (1993), On the Justice of Roosting Chickens (2003), and Kill the Indian, Save the Man (2004) "A powerful manifesto for a true 'Inter-National' law against the hegemonic 'international' system of states and a resounding reminder that human emancipation cannot be separated from ecological justice." --Chulwoo Lee, Professor of Law, Yonsei Law School, Korea This book introduces the Original Nation scholarship to examine the historical genealogy of the nation's struggles against the state. A fundamentally different portrait of history, geography, politics, and the role of law emerges when the perspective of the nation and peoples is placed at the center of geopolitical analysis of global affairs. In contrast to traditional and canonical state-centric narratives, the Original Nation scholarship offers a diametrically distinct "on-the-ground" and "bottom-up" portrait of the struggle, resistance, and defiance of the nation and peoples. It exposes persistent global patterns of genocide, ecocide, and ethnocide that have resulted from attempts by the state to occupy, suppress, exploit, and destroy the nation. The Original Nation scholarship offers a powerful and widely applicable intellectual tool to examine the history of resilience, emancipatory struggles, and collective efforts to build a vibrant alternative world among the nation and peoples across the globe. Hiroshi Fukurai is Professor of Legal Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA, and is the Immediate-Past President of the Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA). Richard Krooth is a practicing attorney and Research Associate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA.

Most journalists and academics attribute the rise of wildfires in the western United States to the USDA Forest Service's successful fire-elimination policies of the twentieth century. However, in Fire Management in the American West, Mark Hudson argues that although a century of suppression did indeed increase the hazard of wildfire, the responsibility does not lie with the USFS alone. The roots are found in the Forest Service's relationships with other, more powerful elements of society--the timber industry in particular. Drawing on correspondence both between and within the Forest Service and the major timber industry associations, newspaper articles, articles from industry outlets, and policy documents from the late 1800s through the present, Hudson shows how the US forest industry, under the constraint of profitability, pushed the USFS away from private industry regulation and toward fire exclusion, eventually changing national forest policy into little more than fire policy. More recently, the USFS has attempted to move beyond the policy of complete fire suppression. Interviews with public land managers in the Pacific Northwest shed light on the sources of the agency's struggles as it attempts to change the way we understand and relate to fire in the West. Fire Management in the American West will be of great interest to environmentalists, sociologists, fire managers, scientists, and academics and students in environmental history and forestry.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hosted an Expert Consultation on "Genetically Modified Organisms in Crop Production and Their Effects on the Environment: Methodologies for Monitoring and the Way Ahead" from 18 to 20 January in Rome. The main objective of the consultation was to review the scientific basis for, and procedures to establish, effective post-release monitoring of genetically modified (GM) crops and develop guidelines to strengthen member countries' capacities to design and carry out monitoring programmes. The consultation was a follow-up to the earlier FAO Expert Consultation on "Environmental Effects of Genetically Modified Crops", which had recommended the environmental effects of GM crops be assessed on a case-by-case basis and emphasized the need to monitor possible medium- to long-term environmental impacts. The main outputs of the meeting were: a review of the scientific criteria and procedures; strategies that could form the basis of efficient monitoring programmes; recommendations for both scientists managing the monitoring process and policy makers.

Revised and updated periodically, The State of the Nation's Ecosystems is widely recognized as America's most comprehensive report on the condition of our lands, waters, and living resources. Like the acclaimed first edition, this second edition provides nonpartisan, scientifically reliable information for policymakers, scientists, journalists, and anyone who is interested in the state of America's environment. The State of the Nation's Ecosystems provides a way to ?take the pulse” of America's environment. It is organized around the nation's primary ecosystems: farmlands, forests, fresh waters, coasts and oceans, grasslands and shrublands, urban and suburban areas, and the nation as a whole. For each, it identifies what should be measured, counted, and reported so that decision makers and others can understand the changes that are occurring, set priorities for action, and measure whether we are achieving our environmental goals. Conditions are tracked using approximately 100 indicators, agreed upon by hundreds of experts from universities, government agencies, corporations, and environmental organizations. The new report refines the set of indicators and supplies data. Until its publication, there was no environmental equivalent to the kind of ?key economic indicators” that help to gauge the economic health of the nation, like gross domestic product. The State of the Nation's Ecosystems provides our first set of ?key environmental indicators.” It won't eliminate differences of opinion about environmental policy, but it will provide a common set of data to inform the debate as well as a common yardstick for measuring the effectiveness of our actions. Most importantly, it will provide much-needed assistance in setting our future agenda.

Nutrient recycling, habitat for plants and animals, flood control, and water supply are among the many beneficial services provided by aquatic ecosystems. In making decisions about human activities, such as draining a wetland for a housing development, it is essential to consider both the value of the development and the value of the ecosystem services that could be lost. Despite a growing recognition of the importance of ecosystem services, their value is often overlooked in environmental decision-making. This report identifies methods for assigning economic value to ecosystem servicesâ€"even intangible onesâ€"and calls for greater collaboration between ecologists and economists in such efforts.

Human well-being relies critically on ecosystem services provided by nature. Examples include water and air quality regulation, nutrient cycling and decomposition, plant pollination and flood control, all of which are dependent on biodiversity. They are predominantly public goods with limited or no markets and do not command any price in the conventional economic system, so their loss is often not detected and continues unaddressed and unabated. This in turn not only impacts human well-being, but also seriously undermines the sustainability of the economic system. It is against this background that TEEB: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity project was set up in 2007 and led by the United Nations Environment Programme to provide a comprehensive global assessment of economic aspects of these issues. This book, written by a team of international experts, represents the scientific state of the art, providing a comprehensive assessment of the fundamental ecological and economic principles of measuring and valuing ecosystem services and biodiversity, and showing how these can be mainstreamed into public policies. This volume and subsequent TEEB outputs will provide the authoritative knowledge and guidance to drive forward the biodiversity conservation agenda for the next decade.

Although the environment of North America is not dissected by political borders, Canada and the United States often measure environmental conditions and report on them using different indicators. This report examines the environmental indicators used by both nations, and based on analysis of current research into common methodologies used in national, regional and global environmental reporting, it goes on to draw lessons for the development of bilateral indicators to cover the North American region.

This assessment report is a component of the multiple-scale southern African sub-global assessment (SAfMA), which investigated the condition and trends of ecosystem services and human well-being in the Gariep basin from 1993 to 2003, as well as future scenarios and possible responses to ecosystem change. The assessment features highlights from four local-scale assessments nested within the basin: Sehlabathebe, Great Fish River, Richtersveld and the Gauteng Province.

Long-term monitoring programs are fundamental to understanding the natural environment and managing major environmental problems. Yet they are often done very poorly and ineffectively. This second edition of the highly acclaimed Effective Ecological Monitoring describes what makes monitoring programs successful and how to ensure that long-term monitoring studies persist. The book has been fully revised and updated but remains concise, illustrating key aspects of effective monitoring with case studies and examples. It includes new sections comparing surveillance-based and question-based monitoring, analysing environmental observation networks, and provides examples of adaptive monitoring. Based on the authors’ 80 years of collective experience in running long-term research and monitoring programs, Effective Ecological Monitoring is a valuable resource for the natural resource management, ecological and environmental science and policy communities.

This handbook brings together leading international academic experts to provide a comprehensive and authoritative survey of global environmental politics. Fully revised, updated and expanded to 45 chapters, the book: • Describes the history of global environmental politics as a discipline and explains the various theories and perspectives used by scholars and students to understand it. • Examines the key actors and institutions in global environmental politics, explaining the roles of states, international organizations, regimes, international law, foreign policy institutions, domestic politics, corporations and transnational actors. • Addresses the ideas and themes shaping the practice and study of global environmental politics, including sustainability, consumption, expertise, uncertainty, security, diplomacy, North-South relations, globalization, justice, ethics, public participation and citizenship. • Assesses the key issues and policies within global environmental politics, including energy, climate change, ozone depletion, air pollution, acid rain, transport, persistent organic pollutants, hazardous wastes, rivers, wetlands, oceans, fisheries, marine mammals, biodiversity, migratory species, natural heritage, forests, desertification, food and agriculture. This second edition includes new chapters on plastics, climate change, energy, earth system governance and the Anthropocene. It is an invaluable resource for students, scholars, researchers and practitioners of environmental politics, environmental studies, environmental science, geography, globalization, international relations and political science.