Far more than oil, the control of water wealth throughout history has been pivotal to the rise and fall of great powers, the achievements of civilization, the transformations of society's vital habitats, and the quality of ordinary daily lives. Today, freshwater scarcity is one of the twenty-first century's decisive, looming challenges, driving new political, economic, and environmental realities across the globe. In Water, Steven Solomon offers the first-ever narrative portrait of the power struggles, personalities, and breakthroughs that have shaped humanity from antiquity's earliest civilizations through the steam-powered Industrial Revolution and America's century. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Water is a groundbreaking account of man's most critical resource in shaping human destinies, from ancient times to our dawning age of water scarcity.

To assemble, evaluate and promote appropriate examination of water management in history requires a bold and global initiative. To this end, the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme is pioneering a project to develop a systematic and transcultural interdisciplinary knowledge base. Water History and Humanity explores key issues and cultural developments in humanitys relationships with water in a coherent, historical framework. The strength of this volume lies in its holistic anthropological approach, which reveals how various cultures have used and conceptualized water across multiple contexts, and how our interactions with water have transformed the way we see ourselves and the world.

Drawing on modern economic theory, this book provides new insights into the economic development of ancient economies and the sustainability of their development. The book pays particular attention to the economics of hunting and gathering societies and their diversity. New ideas are presented about theories of the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, including Childe’s theory of this development. The Agricultural Revolution was a major contributor to economic development because in most cases, it generated an economic surplus. However, as shown, income inequality was a necessary condition for the use of this surplus to promote economic development and to avoid the Malthusian population trap. This inequality was evident in the successful operation of the palatial economies of the Minoan and Mycenaean states. Nevertheless, some post-agricultural economies proved to be unsustainable, and they ‘mysteriously’ disappeared. This happened in the case of the Silesian Únětice culture and population. Economic and ecological reasons for this are suggested. The nature of economic development altered with increased trade, the use of barter, and subsequently the supply of money to facilitate this trade. These developments are examined in the context of the palatial economies of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Elsewhere, multinational business made a substantial contribution to the economic growth of Phoenicia, where international trade was not determined by its natural resource endowments. Thus, Phoenician economic exchange and development provides a different set of insights. The book makes an important contribution to the understanding of the evolution of human societies and will therefore be of interdisciplinary interest including economists (especially economic historians), anthropologists and sociologists, some archaeologists, and historians.

This book comprises papers from the International Conference on Advances and Innovations in Recycling Engineering (AIR-2021). It highlights indispensable issues, challenges, and recommended solutions related to solid waste management and sustainability. The contents deal with recommended solutions and the gap between environmental laws related to recycling of waste and environment threat. Weighing the global economy loss via compromises on industrial growth versus environment provides another dimension to the study and press on the need for alternative practices. The impact on biodiversity conservation and natural resources pollutants is also highlighted. This book will be a useful guide for academics, researchers, and policymakers working in the fields of waste management.

This book aims to come up with views to address the queries of planners, policymakers, and general people for water resources management under uncertainty of climate change, including examples from Asia and Europe with successful adaptive measures to change the challenge of climate change into opportunities. The availability of clean water is a major global challenge for the future due to a rapidly growing population and urbanization where further stress in water resources is expected due to the impact of climate change. The wide range of impacts includes for example changes in hydrology, moisture availability, spatial and temporal variations in magnitude of stream flow, and dwindling of water levels with adverse effect on wetlands and ecosystem. As a consequence, water management has become a serious issue and was identified as a global societal challenge, and climate change forecasting has become one of the key issues in recent research on sustainable water resources management.

This Special Publication provides a range of methods and approaches for characterizing and modelling mass-wasting phenomena responsible for land degradation and erosion in rocky coastal areas. Rocky coasts occur in a variety of geological settings with a wide range of morphologies depending on rock type, tectonics and climate. In all these settings, slope instability represents the most important geological process that significantly influences the human use of coastal resources over a range of magnitudes and periods of recurrence.

The recent technologies for sustainable development and maintaining ecological integrity in the field of agriculture, forestry and environmental management for the green future. Describes the recent technologies and issues to generate awareness among the global scientific community towards sustainable development. Covers various eco-friendly approaches for successful management of soil, water, forest, agriculture, and other natural resources. Addresses the policy issues promoting conservation, protection and management of various natural resources. Presents the issues of climate change and sustainable strategies to combat such a mega event. The existence of life on the earth primarily depends upon the agriculture, forest and environment. The changing climate is imposing the multifaceted challenges in front of human civilization. The agroecosystem management practices and technologies leads to higher productivity with destruction of agricultural, forest and environmental habitat leading to soil-water-air pollution. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) plays a key role in the promoting research and developmental activities in various sectors to achieve the sustainable development goals under 2030 agenda. Gradual growth of science and technology has imposed a significant pressure on the different ecosystem. In this context, approaches such as sustainable agriculture, forestry and eco-friendly technologies need to be address across the world. Keeping view of these facts this book underlines scientific chapters dealing with the issues with proper explanation, and accompanied by illustrative diagrams, tables, database as required. The editors have tried to provide a brief scenario about the current issues related to the agriculture, forestry and environment. Therefore, the book would be a very useful resource for academicians, scientists, and policy makers of the related field.

Life in Europe will indeed go on as the climate changes, but not in the same way as before. The air will be warmer, winds will change, patterns of rainfall and snowfall will alter, and sea level is likely to rise. These phenomena are already being seen. Europe will in the future experience marked changes in vegetation cover, increased floods along rivers and coastlines as well as more frequent droughts and forest fires, often leading to large societal costs. The changes will be minor in some cases, profound in others, but in any case, pervasive. This book uses the most up to date information issued by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and informs readers about these effects, as well as showing how Europe is contributing to attempts to slow the tempo of global climate change, and how it can adapt to the climate change that seems unavoidable. Life in Europe under Climate Change makes essential information on climate impacts in Europe accessible to a broad audience, including students, politicians, planners and members of non-governmental organizations.

This book sheds new light on the remote sensing of agriculture in South/Southeast Asian (S/SEA) countries. S/SEA countries are growing rapidly in terms of population, industrialization, and urbanization. One of the critical challenges in the region is food security. In S/SEA, although total food production and productivity have increased in previous decades, in recent years, the growth rate of food production has slowed down, mostly due to land use change, market forces and policy interventions. Further, the weather and climate systems in the region driven primarily by monsoon variability are resulting in droughts or flooding, impacting agricultural production. Therefore, monitoring crops, including agricultural land cover changes at regular intervals, is essential to predict and prepare for disruptions in the food supply in the S/SEA countries. The current book captures the latest research on the remote sensing of agricultural land cover/ land use changes, including mapping and monitoring crops, crop yields, biophysical parameter retrievals, multi-source data fusion for agricultural applications, and chapters on decision making and early warning systems for food security. The authors of this book are international experts in the field, and their contributions highlight the use of remote sensing and geospatial technologies for agricultural research and applications in South/Southeast Asia.