Durban, South Africa is a city of immense beauty. It is also a city with deep environmental scars caused by industrial giants and an insensitive government. As the host city for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference - COP 17 - Durban will be at the center of the world's climate negotiations. This book takes the reader on a journey from Durban's apartheid roots to its somewhat jaded present, passing cultural icons and political battles while narrating socio-economic and environmental conflict and the reinvention of the city's tradition of social protest. All this creates a context from which the reader can interpret the city's hosting of the COP 17. The book includes the reflections of critical political ecologists, socialists, political economists, geographers, and environmental activists on Durban's political ecology, global climate policy, and COP politics. In this context, it can be understood why the COP 17 represents a vast climate gamble. Will carbon trading solve the Earth's climate crisis? The book looks at the environmental injustices the Earth will have to endure in the face of the demise of the Kyoto protocol, and it critically examines COP 17's faith in finding market solutions for market problems while gambling with the Earth's future.

This book aims to contribute to the discourse on climate crisis by bringing together high-quality empirical research on adaptive approaches and sustainability case studies from across the world. The book is divided into six sections. The introductory section has two chapters which sets the ground of the book as it discusses the framing of climate crisis and the different approaches towards it. It also situates the book within the global discourse. The first chapter seeks the traditional approaches to bridge the gap in the new climate science, while the second chapter delivers the ultimate reasons for temperature change, global warming and its consequences (extreme weather events) in a comprehensive way. It is hoped that the book as a whole will provide a timely synthesis of a rapidly growing and important field of climate science but will also bring forward new and stimulating ideas that will shape a coherent and fruitful vision for future work for the community of Undergraduates, Postgraduates, Ph.D. Scholars and Researchers in the fields of environmental sciences, humanistic and social sciences and geography. In addition, policy and decision makers, environmentalists, NGOs, corporate sectors, social scientists, and government organizations will find this book to be of great value. We believe that a diverse group of academics, scientists, geographers, environmentalists, environmental regulators, social scientists, and sustainable scientists with a common interest within the earth environmental sciences and humanistic and social sciences will find this book to be a comprehensive source for reference. Also, we strongly deemed that it will also provide some support for various levels of organizations and administrations for developing and achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 in purview of climate change.