By 2050 the world’s population will rise to 9 billion. To satisfy demand, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has predicted that food production will need to increase by 70 per cent. Meanwhile, land and water resources are increasingly being degraded and depleted, which has serious implications for developing countries, and in particular for the African continent.

The conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity are issues that have been high on the policy agenda since the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. As part of efforts to implement in situ conservation, a methodology referred to as community biodiversity management (CBM) has been developed by those engaged in this arena. CBM contributes to the empowerment of farming communities to manage their biological resources and make informed decisions on the conservation and use of agrobiodiversity.

Investing in agriculture is essential for reducing hunger and promoting sustainable agricultural production. Those parts of the world where agricultural capital per worker and public investments in agriculture have stagnated are the epicentres of poverty and hunger today. Demand growth over the coming decades will place increasing pressure on the natural resource base. Eradicating hunger sustainably will require a significant increase in agricultural investments, but also an improvement in their effectiveness.

This book is a continuation of the book Agriculture and Food Science Researcher Biographical Sketches and Research Summaries which compiles biographical sketches of top professionals in the field of agriculture and food science research, as well as research summaries from a number of different focuses in this important field.

Ice sheets as vast accumulations of frozen water on land are a direct expression of energy distribution on our planet. They form from the interplay of intensive accumulation of frozen water and insufficient melt during the summer. They define global sea-level and affect the geochemical composition of the ocean. This book presents current research in the study of the dynamics, formation and environmental concerns relating to ice sheets.

As the last recruit into the British Colonial Administration in Northern Nigeria when the country was on the brink of independence, John Hare was dispatched to serve in some of the remotest areas in the North. Having spent two years among the truculent tribes in Tangale-Waja and been a Provincial Marshall during the colourful independence durbar, he was posted to an area in Adamawa Province, which had been part of the original German Cameroons, until it was divided between France and Great Britain after the Great War and administered as part of the French Cameroons and Nigeria.

Though scientists and environmentalists have long expressed concern over the rapid deterioration of the global environment, economists have largely failed to recognize the issue’s relevance to their field. Salah El Serafy argues for an increased focus on the economic aspects of environmental degradation, calling for a fundamental shift in how economists measure and discuss national income.

Climate Change and the Oceans investigates the effects of climate change on the ocean environment and its implications for maritime activities, both globally and within the Asia Pacific region.

This detailed work draws together informed opinion from a range of disciplines to examine the impacts of climate change on marine and coastal areas and review legal and policy responses to the rapidly changing ocean environment.

There is a growing recognition that the diversity of life comprises both biological and cultural diversity. But this division is not universal and, in many cases, has been deepened by the common disciplinary divide between the natural and social sciences and our apparent need to manage and control nature.

This book introduces students with little or no prior programming experience to the art of computational problem solving using Python and various Python libraries, including PyLab. It provides students with skills that will enable them to make productive use of computational techniques, including some of the tools and techniques of “data science” for using computation to model and interpret data.

The Handbook of Energy provides comprehensive, organized coverage on all phases of energy and its role in society, including its social, economic, political, historical, and environmental aspects. While there is a wealth of information about energy available, it is spread across many books, journals, and websites and it tends to target either a particular form of energy or a specific audience. 

Governments across the globe are setting targets for reducing their carbon emissions. For example, the UK Government has committed to an eighty per cent reduction by 2050, when twenty-eight million buildings that currently exist will still be standing; this represents a challenge to improve the energy efficiency of more than one building per minute between now and 2050! This is a problem that needs tackling worldwide and is a challenge to both the refurbishment sector of the global construction industry and to those who own and operate existing buildings.