This unique book focuses on environmental degradation in Asian countries including land degradation and soil erosion. The land degradation covers assessing environmental degradation using geospatial technology, land use land cover mapping, environmental and anthropogenic degradation, assessment of land degradation vulnerability, evaluation of the impact of earthquake and the environmental control of the sand dunes. It also addresses the soil degradation and environmental pollution and presents several case studies such as tectonic activity and erosion, assessment of aircraft sound, soil degradation assessment for the arid territories, soil pollution, waste engine oil contamination, soil degradation, soil erosion modelling, land use and land cover change and its effect on soil erosion changes. Additionally, the book discusses the impact of climate change, and human activities including urban environmental quality, air pollution and the impact of armed conflict on the environment. Moreover, topics such as vegetation degradation including forest changes, hydrological and agricultural drought are presented. The book includes authors and scientists from Egypt, Iraq, Iran, India, Mongolia, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Republic of Kazakhstan, USA, Turkey, South Africa, Italy, China, Malaysia, Poland and Russia. Graduate students, researchers, engineers, policy planners, policymakers and stockholders could benefit from the information and the knowledge in this book.

This volume paints a general picture of the environmental situation in Asia, backing it up with several case studies. Two major points are made in this general picture. The first is that environmental campaigns in Asia tend to have a local focus; they react to very concrete problems in the immediate neighbourhood and as such usually people are engaged in a cause for practical rather than idealistic reasons. Such can be seen in case studies from the volume dealing with campaigns against logging and tree plantations, tourist facilities and factories and in support or defence of nature reserves. This pattern is in marked contrast to the profile of the most successful Western movements (in terms of fund-raising at least) for whom the focus is on perceived problems in distant parts of the world. The second point is evidence in several of the case studies in the volume, namely that environmental campaigns cannot be understood in terms of environmental issues alone. Rather, they should be regarded as a form of cultural critique and frequently are a form of political resistance in situations where open political action is too risky.

This book focuses on the political economy of the environment in Asia, examining the economic and political forces that have generated the problems, the political efforts to find solutions, and the economic and political contexts of proposed solutions.

This volume discusses environmental change, natural resource exploitation and the prospect for ecological sustainability in Southeast Asia. The contributors including sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, economists, political economists and historians, presents the findings of recent archival and field research mainly from ongoing programmes of team research based in European universities and institutes. Among the themes discussed are European and indigenous perceptions of the environment; historical processes of environmental change; the politics of resource use; ecotourism and development; deforestation and smallholding land-use strategies; migration and environmental degradation; disease environment and human geography; demography, sustainability and resource exploitation.

This is the third volume in a respected series edited by the Japan Environmental Council. Part l covers the environmental impact of the military, trade, agriculture/food and the biodiversity of forests and rice paddies. Part 2 examines the problems unique to Northeast Asia, the Mekong region, and Inner Asia. In April 2005 this book was awarded the 6th Environment for Tomorrow Award by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

The economies located in East, South and Southeast Asia have witnessed an interesting growth-sustainability trade-off over the last decades. While growth considerations have paved ways for deepened ties with growing trade-investment waves and increasing population pressure necessitated exploitation of hitherto unutilized natural resources, focus on environmental sustainability has been a recent consideration. The growth impetus still playing a key role in these economies, it becomes imperative that the countries effectively address the key sustainability concerns, e.g. air and water pollution, land degradation, loss of biodiversity, climate change issues like CO2 emissions etc. But how prepared is the governance mechanism of these countries, covering not only the legislative and administrative framework but also involvement of the judiciary, presence of spirited civil society and active engagement of stakeholders in policy-framing dialogues, to rise up to these challenges? The book seeks an answer to this question through the environmental governance mechanism and natural resource conservation policies in three vibrant regions within Asia. A holistic development dimension of sustainable development path emerges, through discussion of policies adopted by developed (Japan, South Korea), upper-middle (China, Malaysia), developing (India, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand) and least developed countries (Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal).