Ever since mankind first appeared on Earth, people have confronted a variety of threats caused by global environmental changes and catastrophic natural disasters. In recent years, there has been a huge necessity to attempt the complementary co-evolution among technologies, urban management, and policy design by putting greater emphasis on local orientation while fully utilizing academic traditions of civil engineering, architecture, environmental engineering and disaster prevention researc...

This book makes the case that many climate related scientists have provided data that confirm that burning fossil fuels has increased greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, which has had a major impact on climate change. Each of the six chapters provides many references and questions for review.The first chapter emphasizes worldwide awareness of the relationship between climate change and disasters in the Asia Pacific region. The following chapters cover such topics as climate change...

This timely book provides a wealth of information to help city managers, policy analysts, and government administrators identify relevant urban environmental problems and an array of potential solutions, analyze policy solutions and outcomes, and communicate with the public regarding urban environmental problems and policies.

Climate change has had a significant impact globally, predominantly for those vulnerable to its influence. The first book of its kind, The Climate Resilient Organization assesses the issues that have mounted for decision-makers in the field, while providing strategies to tackle them.With a particular focus on building climate-resilient pathways for private sector organizations, the expert authors offer practical tools and decision-making criteria for evaluating adaptation ...

The Forests Source Book provides practical operations-oriented guidance for forest sector engagement toward the goals of poverty reduction, conservation and economic development. Intended to guide World Bank lending activities and projects, the Forests Source Book offers information useful to a broad audience of practitioners, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations. The Source Book was developed in partnership with members of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, includin...

Better water management will be crucial if we are to meet many of the key challenges of this century - feeding the worlds growing population and reducing poverty, meeting water and sanitation needs, protecting vital ecosystems, all while adapting to climate change. The approach known as Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is widely recognized as the best way forward, but is poorly understood, even within the water sector. Since a core IWRM principle is that good water management m...

The vocabulary and discourse of water resource management have expanded vastly in recent years to include an array of new concepts and terminology, such as water security, water productivity, virtual water and water governance. While the new conceptual lenses may generate insights that improve responses to the world’s water challenges, their practical use is often encumbered by ambiguity and confusion.This book applies critical scrutiny to a prominent set of new but widely used ter...

The Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook provides an up-to-date understanding of gender issues and a rich compilation of compelling evidence of good practices and lessons learned to guide practitioners in integrating gender dimensions into agricultural projects and programs.It is serves as a tool for: guidance; showcasing key principles in integrating gender into projects; stimulating the imagination of practitioners to apply lessons learned, experiences, and innovations to the design of future s...

Water is the resource that will determine the wealth, welfare, and stability of many countries in the twenty-first century. This book offers a new approach to managing water that will overcome the conflicts that emerge when the interactions among natural, societal, and political forces are overlooked. At the heart of these conflicts are complex water networks. In managing them, science alone is insufficient and so is policy-making that doesn't take science into account. Solutions will only...

Worldwide, disasters and climate change pose a serious risk to sustainable urban development, resulting in escalating human and economic costs. Consequently, city authorities and other urban actors face the challenge of integrating risk reduction and adaptation strategies into their work. However, related knowledge and expertise are still scarce and fragmented.Cities, Disaster Risk and Adaptation explores ways in which resilient cities can be ‘built’ and sustainable urban ...

Lead firms, development organisations, donors and governments view value chains and voluntary standards as vital instruments for achieving millennium development goals through trade and market-related interventions. The precise foundations for these development strategies, which suggest positive development outcomes from integration of poor actors into value chains, are as yet underdeveloped. The interdisciplinary work in this volume shows how trade is managed and asks theory-driven questi...

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is primarily concerned with the future consequences of plans, proposals and policies on the health of communities. It is a rapidly growing complement to Environmental Impact Assessment, increasingly mandated by national and international requirements. Guidelines have been produced by many national and international organizations and it is being introduced in a number of undergraduate or postgraduate university curricula. However, there has been until now no b...