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Clumsy Solutions For A Complex World
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Book Synopsis Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World by : M. Verweij
Download or read book Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World written by M. Verweij and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-08-31 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World is a powerful and original statement on why well-intended attempts to alleviate pressing social ills too often derail, and how effective, efficient and broadly acceptable solutions to social problems can be found.
Book Synopsis Clumsy Solutions for a Wicked World by : Marco Verweij
Download or read book Clumsy Solutions for a Wicked World written by Marco Verweij and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-08-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This follow-up to Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World (Palgrave, 2006) seeks to understand why even well-intended efforts to resolve pressing international and global problems so often appear to fail spectacularly and what can be done to remedy this. The author analyzes four of the biggest global governance failures of the last few decades.
Book Synopsis Systems Analysis Approach for Complex Global Challenges by : Priscilla Mensah
Download or read book Systems Analysis Approach for Complex Global Challenges written by Priscilla Mensah and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, which contains a collection of review articles as well as focus on evidence-based policy making, will serve as a valuable resource not just for all postgraduate students conducting research using systems analysis thinking but also for policy makers. To our knowledge, a book of this nature which also has a strong African focus is currently not available. The book examines environmental and socio-economic risks with the aim of providing an analytical foundation for the management and governance of natural resources, disasters, addressing climate change, and easing the technological and ecological transitions to sustainability. It provides scientific and strategic analysis to better understand the dynamics of future energy transitions, their main driving forces, enabling factors, barriers, as well as their consequences for the social, economic and environmental dimensions of human wellbeing. Science-based policy advice is achieved through an integrated assessment and modeling of how to simultaneously address the major energy policy challenges in the areas of environment (climate change and air pollution), energy poverty (or access to affordable and clean energy for the poor), energy security and reliability. It also aims to improve our understanding of ecosystems and their management in today’s changing world—in particular, the current state of ecosystems, and their ecological thresholds and buffering capacities. It provides support for policy makers in developing rational, realistic and science-based regional, national and global strategies for the production of fuel, food and fibre that sustain ecosystem services and safeguard food security. Finally, it addresses the human development dimension of global change based on comprehensive studies on the changing size and composition of human populations around the world by analyzing both their impacts and the differential vulnerabilities by age, gender and level of education.
Book Synopsis The New Public Leadership Challenge by : S. Brookes
Download or read book The New Public Leadership Challenge written by S. Brookes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-05-13 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawn from the results of five seminars this unique book looks at the four areas of: public sector reform; essential features for public leaders; public leadership in action; and the outline of a public leadership approach for the future. It seeks to give public leadership a firm foothold within the study of leadership in general.
Book Synopsis Clumsy Floodplains by : Thomas Hartmann
Download or read book Clumsy Floodplains written by Thomas Hartmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extreme floods cause enormous damage in floodplains, which levees cannot prevent. Therefore, it is vital for spatial planning to provide space for water retention in these areas. Land use planners, water management agencies, landowners, and policymakers all agree on this challenge, but attempts to make the space for rivers to provide retention are generally not very successful. Adopting an innovative interdisciplinary approach, this book examines how society can manage the use of the floodplains along rivers in the face of extreme floods, focusing in particular on the relation between social arrangements and the elemental forces of floods. The book firstly analyses why contemporary floodplain management is so often clumsy and ineffective by looking at various real-life situations in Germany, using Cultural Theory to provide a much-needed, but previously neglected social perspective. These analyses show a pattern of activity resulting from different rationalities which dominate the floodplains in different phases. During extreme floods, it is rational to manage floodplains as dangerous areas; sandbags and disaster management dominate the scene. After some time, the rationality of control takes over the floodplain management; policymakers discuss flood risk and water managers build levees. When public attention diminishes, floodplains become inconspicuous until more and more stakeholders regard floodplains as profitable land. The current system of planning, law, and property rights even encourages stakeholders to act out their plural rationalities. A permanent dynamic imbalance of different rationalities leads to a robust social construction of the floodplains which results in viable but clumsy floodplains. In the course of time, however, the patterns of activity in the floodplains lead to an increase in intensity and frequency of extreme floods, and to more vulnerable potential damages in the floodplains. Risk increases. Coping with this situation needs another kind of floodplain management. This book proposes an innovative concept - Large Areas for Temporary Emergency Retention (LATER) - in "Clumsy Floodplains" as an alternative to levee-based flood protection. The concept aims at reducing damage by extreme floods in a catchment area by inundating less valuable areas to protect places that are more valuable. It finally examines how this LATER concept might be implemented in areas where there is currently a clumsy style of floodplain management, what interventions are required and how these might come about effectively. Again, using Cultural Theory, the book puts forward a valuable land policy solution which aims at implementing LATER in clumsy floodplains and which develops an obligatory insurance against natural hazards as a responsive land policy for LATER. The book represents the author's PhD research, which he conducted as research assistant at the department for Land Policy, Land Management and Municipal Geoinformation at the School of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund University, Germany.
Book Synopsis Cultural Analysis by : Aaron Wildavsky
Download or read book Cultural Analysis written by Aaron Wildavsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a result of a lifetime of incomparably wide-ranging investigations, Aaron Wildavsky concluded that politics in the United States and elsewhere was a patterned activity, exhibiting recurring regularities. Political values, beliefs, and institutions were neither endlessly varied, nor haphazardly organized. They tended to exhibit a limited range of variation, and were organized in discoverable, predictable ways. In Cultural Analysis, the fourth collection of his essays posthumously published by Transaction, Wildavsky argues that American politics, public law, and public administration are the contested terrain of rival, inescapable political cultures.Analysts of American politics distinguish liberals from conservatives and Democrats from Republicans, but do not explain how these categories of political allegiance develop, maintain themselves, or change. Wildavsky offers a cultural-functional explanation for ideological and partisan coherence and realignment. Wildavsky also felt that these dualisms did not adequately capture the ideological and partisan variation he observed on the political landscape. Like others, he detected another recurring strain of political allegiance: that of classical liberalism or libertarianism. People of this political stripe valued freedom more than equality (the primary political value of contemporary liberals), and also more than order, the primary political value of conservatives.The value of Wildavsky's reconceptualization of the ideological and social foundations of political conflict, compromise, and coalition is assessed here by Wildavsky's former colleagues and students at the University of California, Berkeley: Dennis Coyle, Richard Ellis, Robert Kagan, Austin Ranney, and Brendon Swedlow.
Book Synopsis A Changing Environment for Human Security by : Linda Sygna
Download or read book A Changing Environment for Human Security written by Linda Sygna and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental change presents a new context and new opportunities for transformational change. This timely book will inspire new ways of understanding the relationship between environmental change and human security. A Changing Environment for Human Security: Transformative Approaches to Research, Policy and Action both supports and informs a call for new, transformative approaches to research, policy and action. The chapters in this book include critical analyses, case studies and reflections on contemporary environmental and social challenges, with a strong emphasis on those related to climate change. Human thoughts and actions have contributed to an environment of insecurity, manifested as multiple interacting threats that now represent a serious challenge to humanity. Yet humans also have the capacity to collectively transform the economic, political, social and cultural systems and structures that perpetuate human insecurities. These fresh perspectives on global environmental change from an interdisciplinary group of international experts will inspire readers – whether students, researchers, policy makers, or practitioners – to think differently about environmental issues and sustainability. The contributions show that in a changing environment, human security is not only a possibility, but a choice.
Book Synopsis Hitting the Wall by : Richard Caputo
Download or read book Hitting the Wall written by Richard Caputo and published by Morgan & Claypool Publishers. This book was released on 2009-01-08 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hitting the Wall examines the combination of two intractable energy problems of our age: the peaking of global oil production and the overloading of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Both emerge from the overconsumption of fossil fuels and solving one problem helps solve the other. The misinformation campaign about climate change is discussed as is the role that noncarbon energy solutions can play. There are nine major components in the proposed noncarbon strategy including energy efficiency and renewable energy. Economics and realistic restraints are considered and the total carbon reduction by 2030 is evaluated, and the results show that this strategy will reduce the carbon emission in the United States to be on track to an 80% reduction in 2050. The prospects for “clean” coal and “acceptable” nuclear are considered, and there is some hope that they would be used in an interim role. Although there are significant technical challenges to assembling these new energy systems, the primary difficulty lies in the political arena. A multigenerational strategy is needed to guide our actions over the next century. Garnering long-term multiadministration coherent policies to put the elements of any proposed strategy in place, is a relatively rare occurrence in the United States. More common is the reversal of one policy by the next administration with counterproductive results. A framework for politically stable action is developed using the framework of “energy tribes” where all the disparate voices in the energy debate are included and considered in a “messy process.” This book provides hope that our descendants in the next century will live in a world that would be familiar to us. This can only be achieved if the United States plays an active leadership role in maintaining climatic balance. Table of Contents: Introduction / The End of Cheap Oil / Carbon - Too Much of a Good Thing / Carbonless Energy Options / Conventional Energy / Policy for Whom? / Call to Arms / References
Download or read book Digital Dice written by Paul Nahin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some probability problems are so difficult that they stump the smartest mathematicians. But even the hardest of these problems can often be solved with a computer and a Monte Carlo simulation, in which a random-number generator simulates a physical process, such as a million rolls of a pair of dice. This is what Digital Dice is all about: how to get numerical answers to difficult probability problems without having to solve complicated mathematical equations. Popular-math writer Paul Nahin challenges readers to solve twenty-one difficult but fun problems, from determining the odds of coin-flipping games to figuring out the behavior of elevators. Problems build from relatively easy (deciding whether a dishwasher who breaks most of the dishes at a restaurant during a given week is clumsy or just the victim of randomness) to the very difficult (tackling branching processes of the kind that had to be solved by Manhattan Project mathematician Stanislaw Ulam). In his characteristic style, Nahin brings the problems to life with interesting and odd historical anecdotes. Readers learn, for example, not just how to determine the optimal stopping point in any selection process but that astronomer Johannes Kepler selected his second wife by interviewing eleven women. The book shows readers how to write elementary computer codes using any common programming language, and provides solutions and line-by-line walk-throughs of a MATLAB code for each problem. Digital Dice will appeal to anyone who enjoys popular math or computer science. In a new preface, Nahin wittily addresses some of the responses he received to the first edition.
Book Synopsis Aid, Technology and Development by : Dipak Gyawali
Download or read book Aid, Technology and Development written by Dipak Gyawali and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last 50 years, Nepal has been considered an experiential model in determining the effectiveness and success of global human development strategies, both in theory and in practice. As such, it provides a rich array of in-depth case studies in both development success and failure. This edited collection examines these in order to propose a novel perspective on how human development occurs and how it can be aided and sustained. Aid, Technology and Development: The lessons from Nepal champions plural rationality from both a theoretical and practical perspective in order to challenge and critique the status quo in human development understanding, while simultaneously presenting a concrete framework with which to aid citizen and governmental organisations in the galvanization of human development. Including contributions by leading international social scientists and development practitioners throughout Nepal, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners working in the field of foreign aid and development studies.
Book Synopsis Educational Leadership for a More Sustainable World by : Mike Bottery
Download or read book Educational Leadership for a More Sustainable World written by Mike Bottery and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Educational Leadership for a More Sustainable World argues that current crises in educational policies and practice, including the recruitment and retention of educational leaders, ultimately derive from the interactions between four key challenges which also underpin current global and societal issues of sustainability: A culture of consumption Global energy demands Climate change Emerging population patterns Mike Bottery argues that problems in dealing with these four global challenges, as well as many crises in education, are in large part due to a failure to appreciate their complex interactions and effects, and of the need for sufficiently complex responses. The result is that many policies in many areas hinder rather than facilitate appropriate solutions. However, by showing that the dynamics of crises in educational sustainability have many similarities to those of global systems, this book argues that the adoption of a number of core practices and values can help educational leaders develop greater sustainability, not only in their own area of activity but can also help them make a valuable contribution to greater sustainability at the global level as well.
Book Synopsis Water for Food in a Changing World by : Alberto Garrido
Download or read book Water for Food in a Changing World written by Alberto Garrido and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-04-12 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is not enough water globally for all the things humans need and want water to do for us. Water supply bubbles are bursting in China, the Middle East and India with potentially serious implications for the global economy and for political stability. Even the United States is depleting groundwater on average 25% faster than it is being replenished. Our thirst for water grows with our population, but the amount of fresh water available on Earth is fixed. If we assume "business as usual" by 2050 about 40% of the projected global population of 9.4 billion is expected to be facing water stress or scarcity. With increasing climate variability being predicted by global climate models, we are likely also to have more people without adequate water more of the time, even in water-rich regions. Irrigation productivity rose dramatically over the past 40 years as a result of the Green Revolution. However, even if we disregard the environmental impacts caused by that revolution, we are no nearer to achieving global food security than we were 40 years ago, as every time we come close to filling the food production gap population growth and ecosystem decline associated with water diversions to human purposes set us back. Our natural and agricultural ecosystems are trying to tell us something. This book pursues these overarching themes connecting to water and food production at global and regional scales. The collection offers a comprehensive discussion of all relevant issues, and offers a wide-ranging discussion with the aim of contributing to the global debate about water and food crises.
Book Synopsis Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication by : Robert L. Heath
Download or read book Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication written by Robert L. Heath and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-28 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication explores the scope and purpose of risk, and its counterpart, crisis, to facilitate the understanding of these issues from conceptual and strategic perspectives. Recognizing that risk is a central feature of our daily lives, found in relationships, organizations, governments, the environment, and a wide variety of interactions, contributors to this volume explore such questions as "What is likely to happen, to whom, and with what consequences?" "To what extent can science and vigilance prevent or mitigate negative outcomes?" and "What obligation do some segments of local, national, and global populations have to help other segments manage risks?", shedding light on the issues in the quest for definitive answers. The Handbook offers a broad approach to the study of risk and crisis as joint concerns. Chapters explore the reach of crisis and risk communication, define and examine key constructs, and parse the contexts of these vital areas. As a whole, the volume presents a comprehensive array of studies that highlight the standard principles and theories on both topics, serving as the largest effort to date focused on engaging risk communication discussions in a comprehensive manner. Now available in paperback, the Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication can be readily used in graduate coursework and individual research programs. With perspectives from psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, and communication, the Handbook provides vital insights for all disciplines studying risk, and is required reading for scholars and researchers investigating risk and crisis in various contexts.
Book Synopsis Old Growth in a New World by : Thomas A. Spies
Download or read book Old Growth in a New World written by Thomas A. Spies and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Old-growth forests represent a lofty ideal as much as an ecosystem—an icon of unspoiled nature, ecological stability, and pristine habitat. These iconic notions have actively altered the way society relates to old-growth forests, catalyzing major changes in policy and management. But how appropriate are those changes and how well do they really serve in reaching conservation goals? Old Growth in a New World untangles the complexities of the old growth concept and the parallel complexity of old-growth policy and management. It brings together more than two dozen contributors—ecologists, economists, sociologists, managers, historians, silviculturists, environmentalists, timber producers, and philosophers—to offer a broad suite of perspectives on changes that have occurred in the valuing and management of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest over the past thirty years. The book • introduces the issues and history of old-growth values and conservation in the Pacific Northwest; • explores old growth through the ideas of leading ecologists and social scientists; • addresses the implications for the future management of old-growth forests and considers how evolving science and social knowledge might be used to increase conservation effectiveness. By confronting the complexity of the old-growth concept and associated policy and management challenges, Old Growth in a New World encourages productive discussion on the future of old growth in the Pacific Northwest and offers options for more effective approaches to conserving forest biodiversity.
Download or read book Doing AI written by Richard Heimann and published by BenBella Books. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured our imaginations—and become a distraction. Too many leaders embrace the oversized narratives of artificial minds outpacing human intelligence and lose sight of the original problems they were meant to solve. When businesses try to “do AI,” they place an abstract solution before problems and customers without fully considering whether it is wise, whether the hype is true, or how AI will impact their organization in the long term. Often absent is sound reasoning for why they should go down this path in the first place. Doing AI explores AI for what it actually is—and what it is not— and the problems it can truly solve. In these pages, author Richard Heimann unravels the tricky relationship between problems and high-tech solutions, exploring the pitfalls in solution-centric thinking and explaining how businesses should rethink AI in a way that aligns with their cultures, goals, and values. As the Chief AI Officer at Cybraics Inc., Richard Heimann knows from experience that AI-specific strategies are often bad for business. Doing AI is his comprehensive guide that will help readers understand AI, avoid common pitfalls, and identify beneficial applications for their companies. This book is a must-read for anyone looking for clarity and practical guidance for identifying problems and effectively solving them, rather than getting sidetracked by a shiny new “solution” that doesn’t solve anything.
Book Synopsis Collaborative Resilience by : Bruce Evan Goldstein
Download or read book Collaborative Resilience written by Bruce Evan Goldstein and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a range of efforts to enhance resilience through collaboration, describing communities that have survived and even thrived by building trust and interdependence. A resilient system is not just discovered through good science; it emerges as a community debates and defines ecological and social features of the system and appropriate scales of activity. Poised between collaborative practice and resilience analysis, collaborative resilience is both a process and an outcome of collective engagement with social-ecological complexity.
Book Synopsis Governance, Policy and Juxtaposition by : Michael Roe
Download or read book Governance, Policy and Juxtaposition written by Michael Roe and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers governance and policy-making within the maritime sector, and focuses significantly on the dimensional context within which governance works. Recognising the importance of understanding governance and policy at times when the world is faced with social, political, and economic problems, it highlights the fact that both areas are equally significant in understanding today’s political economy. By focusing on the maritime sector, a pillar industry supporting international trade activities, the book offers a unique perspective to explain the difficulties of balancing policy-making with governance in order to provide solutions. It also examines the importance of developing a governance process that encourages and accommodates juxtaposition in a way that ensures that the effect of independent policy-making is understood upon the success or otherwise of policies across a range of contexts and problems. Given the in-depth nature of the text, it is of interest to academics, researchers and professionals in the field.
