The collection of papers in the book Property Rights and the Environment: Social and Ecological Issues, (6) and this companion volume examine the relationships between people, the environment, and property rights and the ways in which a given social and ecological context affects those relationships. The papers are products of a research program at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. The main objective of the program was to convene social scientists and natural scientists to address research questions in their full social and ecological dimensions.The program's participants addressed five general issues related to property rights and the environment: (1) the design of governance systems for sustainability; (2) the relationship between equity, stewardship, and environmental resilience; (3) the use of traditional knowledge in resource management, (4) the mechanisms that link people to their environments, and (5) the role played by population and poverty. This volume presents case studies that address questions of design application in those five areas.(6) Also available: Property Rights and the Environment: Social and Ecological Issues. (ISBN 0-8213-3415-8) Stock No. 13415.

It is usually the case that scientists examine either ecological systems or social systems, yet the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of environmental management and sustainable development is becoming increasingly obvious. Developed under the auspices of the Beijer Institute in Stockholm, this new book analyses social and ecological linkages in selected ecosystems using an international and interdisciplinary case study approach. The chapters provide detailed information on a variety of management practices for dealing with environmental change. Taken as a whole, the book will contribute to the greater understanding of essential social responses to changes in ecosystems, including the generation, accumulation and transmission of ecological knowledge, structure and dynamics of institutions, and the cultural values underlying these responses. A set of new (or rediscovered) principles for sustainable ecosystem management is also presented. Linking Social and Ecological Systems will be of value to natural and social scientists interested in sustainability.

v. 2. Population, resources and development -- v.3. Ecological degradation of land

Despite international initiatives such as the Earth Summit in 1992 and ongoing efforts to implement the Kyoto Protocol, human activities continue to register a destructive toll on the planetary environment. At root, research on global environmental risk seeks new pathways for reversing unsustainable trends, curtailing ongoing destructive activities, and creating a life-sustaining planet. This book takes stock of the distinctive challenges posed by global environmental risks, the capacity of knowledge systems to identify and characterize such risks, and the competence of human society to manage the unprecedented complexity. Particular attention trains on engaging, in ways conducive to enhancing social learning and adaptation, the large uncertainties inherent in these risks. Various chapters enlist different scales of analysis to explore the manifestation and causes of global environmental risks in all the diversity of their regional expression. Throughout, the editors and contributors accord prominence to the vulnerability of people and places to environmental degradation. Understanding vulnerability is a neglected key to assessing the nature of the risks and determining strategies for altering trajectories of threat. Global risk futures, the editors argue, are not intractable, and are still amenable to a risk-analysis enterprise that is democratic in principle, humanistic in concept, and geared to the realities that pertain to the particular societies, locales, and regions that will ultimately bear the risk.