The risks of catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss throw into focus the impact of humans on ecosystem processes and our dependency, in turn, on the services those processes provide. Adapting our ways of life – our settlements and our systems of food production – to changing ecological circumstances, requires more than just an agreement to reduce carbon emissions; it requires us to deepen our understanding of environmental change as a jointly social and ecological process. The Routledge International Handbook of Social and Environmental Change reviews the major ways in which social scientists are attempting to conceptualize more integrated perspectives on society and nature. It explores the causes, contradictions and consequences of global social-ecological change, along with the uncertainties and governance dilemmas these create. Case studies are drawn from a variety of sectors across the developed and developing worlds to illustrate the inter-connectedness of ecosystem health, natural resource condition, livelihood security, social justice and development.
1. The Inseparability of People and Ecology: Ecosystem Processes and Social Services
Part 1: Conceptualising Social-Ecological Adaptation
2. A New Age of Risk: Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss
3. Ecological Modernisation Versus the End of Modernity
4. Manifesto for a 'Resources-Sociology'
5. Social and Ecological Resilience
6. Sustainability as Social Practice
Part 2: The Contradictions and Consequences of Global Socio-Ecological Change
7. The 'Right To Development': Ecological Imperialism and Environmental Justice
8. Environmental Sustainability and Rapid Environmental Growth: The Case of China
9. Temporal Mismatches? Short-Term Adaptation And Long-Term Mitigation
10. Sustainable Consumption?
11. Environmental Migration
12. Mobile Populations: Environmental Change and the Global Commuter Class
Part 3: Dealing with the Uncertainties Of Social and Environmental Change
13. Uncertainty and Environmental Regulation
14. Re-Organising Science: The IPCC and Science Beyond The Test Tube
15. Social Learning and Environmental Change
16. Social Organisation and Technological Hazards
17. Researching Socio-Ecological Adaptation
Part 4: Shifting Regimes Of Governance
18. From Rio to Copenhagen: Multilateral Agreements, Disagreements and Situated Actions
19. Adaptability within the Environmental State
20. Market-Based Governance: The Neoliberalisation of 'The Environment'
21. Property Rights: Biodiversity, Biological Resources and Knowledge
22. Defining Socio-Ecological Best Practice: Standards, Audit and Certification
23. Self-Regulation: Corporate Social Responsibility
Part 5: Resilience and Adaptability within Social-Ecological Systems
24. Oceans, Waterways and Fisheries
25. Agriculture and Food Security
26. Cities
27. Forests
28. Disasters
29. Ecological Public Health
Stewart Lockie is Professor and Head of the School of Sociology at The Australian National University. David A. Sonnenfeld is Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at the State University of New York. Dana R. Fisher is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University.