Nature-Based Solutions for Building Resilience in Towns and Cities

Nature-Based Solutions for Building Resilience in Towns and Cities PDF Author: Asian Development Bank
Publisher: Asian Development Bank
ISBN: 9292576585
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Urban populations are projected to increase from 54% to 66% of the global population by 2050, with close to 90% of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa. Cities and towns---a growing source of greenhouse gas emissions---will need to address challenges posed by climate change. A nature-based approach in identifying climate change vulnerabilities and developing relevant adaptation options was conducted in three towns of the Greater Mekong Subregion. Working with local governments, nongovernment organizations, women's groups, and professional associations, town-wide adaptation measures were defined by overlaying climate change projections on town plans and zoning schemes for strategic infrastructure. This publication captures valuable experience and lessons from the project.

Out Of Control

Out Of Control PDF Author: Kevin Kelly
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 078674703X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 666

Book Description
Out of Control chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the machines and systems that drive our economy are so complex and autonomous as to be indistinguishable from living things.

Resilience Education

Resilience Education PDF Author: Joel H. Brown
Publisher: Corwin Press
ISBN: 9780761976264
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Book Description
This book examines how young people who struggle with life's worst conditions somehow manage to overcome adversity, identifying significant factors that contribute to their resilience. The book presents information and decision making skills students need to make good decisions in the face of adversity; learning strategies and teaching techniques that facilitate student acquisition of good decision making skills; vignettes and specific examples of what a resilient youth looks like; real-world portraits of school communities that support resilience; and specific guidelines for creating conditions for resilience in the classroom. There are nine chapters in two parts. Part 1, "Supporting Evidence for Resilience," includes: (1) "The Limitations of a Risk Orientation"; (2)"Understanding the Human Capacity for Healthy Adaptation"; and (3) "Applying a Resilience Approach to Education." Part 2, "The PORT-able Approach to Resilience Education," includes: (4) "Educating through Participation, Observation, Reflection, and Transformation"; (5) "Participation: Authentic, Active Engagement"; (6) "Observation: Noting Your Experience"; (7) "Reflection: Interpreting Your Experience"; (8) "Transformation: Being Aware of and Responsible for Change"; and (9) "Bringing It All Together." (Contains 108 references.) (SM)

Public Parks

Public Parks PDF Author: Alexander Garvin
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393732797
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Everything that landscape architects, architects, planners, civic officials, and citizen activists need to know about the critical urban role of public parks. Everything that anybody (whether they are citizen activists, or public officials, or professional landscape architects, architects, and planners) needs to know about the critical role public parks play in creating livable communities. Millions of dollars are being spent on restoring parks and creating new ones. Planner Alexander Garvin explains the rationales for their existence, the forms they take, their value, ways to pay for and govern them, and the ingredients that make successful parks, providing the first single definitive source of wisdom about them.

Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States

Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States PDF Author: Mieczysław P. Boduszyński
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801899192
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Book Description
In the 1990s, amid political upheaval and civil war, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia dissolved into five successor states. The subsequent independence of Montenegro and Kosovo brought the total number to seven. Balkan scholar and diplomat to the region Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski examines four of those states—Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia—and traces their divergent paths toward democracy and Euro-Atlantic integration over the past two decades. Boduszynski argues that regime change in the Yugoslav successor states was powerfully shaped by both internal and external forces: the economic conditions on the eve of independence and transition and the incentives offered by the European Union and other Western actors to encourage economic and political liberalization. He shows how these factors contributed to differing formulations of democracy in each state. The author engages with the vexing problems of creating and sustaining democracy when circumstances are not entirely supportive of the effort. He employs innovative concepts to measure the quality of and prospects for democracy in the Balkan region, arguing that procedural indicators of democratization do not adequately describe the stability of liberalism in post-communist states. This unique perspective on developments in the region provides relevant lessons for regime change in the larger post-communist world. Scholars, practitioners, and policymakers will find the book to be a compelling contribution to the study of comparative politics, democratization, and European integration.

Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume One: Summary

Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume One: Summary PDF Author: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company
ISBN: 1459410696
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 673

Book Description
This is the Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its six-year investigation of the residential school system for Aboriginal youth and the legacy of these schools. This report, the summary volume, includes the history of residential schools, the legacy of that school system, and the full text of the Commission's 94 recommendations for action to address that legacy. This report lays bare a part of Canada's history that until recently was little-known to most non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Commission discusses the logic of the colonization of Canada's territories, and why and how policy and practice developed to end the existence of distinct societies of Aboriginal peoples. Using brief excerpts from the powerful testimony heard from Survivors, this report documents the residential school system which forced children into institutions where they were forbidden to speak their language, required to discard their clothing in favour of institutional wear, given inadequate food, housed in inferior and fire-prone buildings, required to work when they should have been studying, and subjected to emotional, psychological and often physical abuse. In this setting, cruel punishments were all too common, as was sexual abuse. More than 30,000 Survivors have been compensated financially by the Government of Canada for their experiences in residential schools, but the legacy of this experience is ongoing today. This report explains the links to high rates of Aboriginal children being taken from their families, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and high rates of suicide. The report documents the drastic decline in the presence of Aboriginal languages, even as Survivors and others work to maintain their distinctive cultures, traditions, and governance. The report offers 94 calls to action on the part of governments, churches, public institutions and non-Aboriginal Canadians as a path to meaningful reconciliation of Canada today with Aboriginal citizens. Even though the historical experience of residential schools constituted an act of cultural genocide by Canadian government authorities, the United Nation's declaration of the rights of aboriginal peoples and the specific recommendations of the Commission offer a path to move from apology for these events to true reconciliation that can be embraced by all Canadians.

Pathways to Urban Sustainability

Pathways to Urban Sustainability PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309444535
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Book Description
Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. More than half the world's population lives in urban areas, with the U.S. percentage at 80 percent. Cities have captured more than 80 percent of the globe's economic activity and offered social mobility and economic prosperity to millions by clustering creative, innovative, and educated individuals and organizations. Clustering populations, however, can compound both positive and negative conditions, with many modern urban areas experiencing growing inequality, debility, and environmental degradation. The spread and continued growth of urban areas presents a number of concerns for a sustainable future, particularly if cities cannot adequately address the rise of poverty, hunger, resource consumption, and biodiversity loss in their borders. Intended as a comparative illustration of the types of urban sustainability pathways and subsequent lessons learned existing in urban areas, this study examines specific examples that cut across geographies and scales and that feature a range of urban sustainability challenges and opportunities for collaborative learning across metropolitan regions. It focuses on nine cities across the United States and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Grand Rapids, MI, Flint, MI, Cedar Rapids, IA, Chattanooga, TN, and Vancouver, Canada), chosen to represent a variety of metropolitan regions, with consideration given to city size, proximity to coastal and other waterways, susceptibility to hazards, primary industry, and several other factors.

The Unplugging

The Unplugging PDF Author: Yvette Nolan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781770911321
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In this tale of survival, two women are exiled from their post-apocalyptic village because they have passed their child-bearing years.

Local Action on Climate Change

Local Action on Climate Change PDF Author: Susie Moloney
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134810903
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
There is growing interest in analysing the role and effectiveness of the local scale in responding to the global challenge of climate change. However, while accounts of urban climate change governance are growing, there is now a real need for further conceptual and empirical work to better understand processes of change and uptake across a range of climate change actions. Local Action on Climate Change examines how local climate change responses are emerging, being operationalized and evaluated within a range of geographical and socio-political contexts across the globe. Focussing on the role and potential of local governments, non-government organisations and community groups in driving transformative change, the authors analyse how local climate change responses have emerged and explore the extent to which they are or have the potential to be innovative or transformative in terms of governance, policy and practice change. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies, including examples from Vanuatu, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Sweden, the USA and India, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental policy and governance, and sustainability.

No Logo

No Logo PDF Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312203436
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 520

Book Description
"What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands." Billy Bragg from the bookjacket.