Climate change has already profoundly changed the ecological world on all levels of the biological hierarchy. Comparing the past with the present allows researchers to document that changes have happened, and to understand why some groups (e. g. birds vs. mammals in the Mojave Desert) respond differently than others. Climate change has already changed population phenology, and researchers can estimate the speed of phenological change. Population range shifts may occur on two fronts: leading-edge expansion and trailing-edge contraction. Both of these processes are influenced by biotic and abiotic factors. Climate change can also influence the genetic structure and sex ratio of populations – in extreme cases leading to extinction. Changes to the timing of migration or to the emergence of plants and insects can cause phenological mismatch of exploitative or competitive interactions. Prey species are likely to benefit, while predators or herbivores may suffer from lack of food. On a larger scale, both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are showing the effects of climate change, even in tropical biomes where warming and drying are not as prominent as they are in more temperate or polar biomes. Though immune to drought, marine biomes are suffering from acidification and from low oxygen levels.

This is a case study about the development and growth of e-books at Barnes & Noble. By 2012, both Apple and Barnes & Noble had gained footholds in the e-book marketplace. While Amazon initially controlled 90 percent of the e-book market, in 2012 Barnes & Noble had about 25 percent and Apple 11 percent of the market, pushing Amazon down to about 60 percent. However, the struggles were not over. How could Barnes & Noble create a sustainable competitive advantage, and a profitable business, against the e-commerce giant Amazon on one side and the electronics giant Apple on the other side?

To provide context for the later chapters and analysis, the chapter outlines the key characteristics of Europe’s environment and nature, and the effects of human actions on it. It firstly describes the biophysical geography and natural history of Europe, including the legacy of the last Ice Age, and the current characteristics of the biogeographical regions and marine regions. It then summarises the main impacts of human activities on biodiversity in Europe, starting with early agriculture and forest clearances that created seminatural ecosystems and cultural landscapes, followed by the profound impacts of the industrial and agricultural revolutions, and more recent changes in land- and sea-use and resulting pressures over the last forty years. Other key pressures are also identified, including in relation to forestry, water and air pollution, fisheries, invasive alien species and climate change. The chapter concludes with an outline of Europe’s remaining biodiversity, identifying hotspots, and the implications for nature conservation approaches and priorities.

Property law is increasingly confronted with limits and modifications arising from environmental and social contexts. The objective of this chapter is to highlight how property law can provide answers to environmental challenges, by adapting several of its fundamental concepts to the polymorphism of environmental and social issues. Starting with a study of the theoretical movement of Earth jurisprudence, the chapter suggests that it is possible to consider Nature as a subject of legal interests, allowing it to acquire legal standing. It also suggests that it is necessary to reconceptualise property and its narrative to develop, in both civil and common law, a more limited, relational and functional conception of property. In addition, the polymorphic heritage of property law makes it possible to call upon the civilian concept of patrimony, in its symbolic or technical function, to protect the environment.

This chapter argues that animals, as part of the environment, benefit from the protection afforded by the direct and indirect environmental safeguards offered by principles and rules of international humanitarian law. However, it also reveals that the pertinent norms are weak and largely unclear, especially in the context of non-international armed conflicts. For this reason, the chapter contends that the said rules need to be read in conjunction with the growing body of international norms, standards and mechanisms that seek to prevent and redress environmental harm during peacetime. Indeed, international environmental law has the potential to protect animals from suffering from the general deterioration of natural habitats and ecosystems caused by humans. However, the protection offered by the relevant instruments and unwritten principles is severely constrained by their narrow substantive, personal and territorial scope of application.

This chapter analyses the treatment of animals in sea warfare under extant international law and it assesses the adequacy of these norms for the protection of animal welfare. The welfare of marine animals is threatened by warfare in various ways. Individual marine mammals, such as dolphins or sea lions, are trained to take part in hostilities. Other sea life suffers, whether directly or indirectly, the repercussions of hostilities. In the context of prize law, animals could in some cases qualify as contraband goods, susceptible to seizure when on board neutral vessels heading toward enemy ports. It is concluded that the law as it stands today provides neither optimal protection for animals considered as a constitutive part of the marine environment nor for animals in themselves considered as sentient beings. The chapter formulates recommendations for the progressive development of the law, including the creation of a sui generis status for sentient animals, the regulation of military sonars and the establishment of protected marine zones where no combat activities whatsoever should take place.

This chapter understands international law as more than a technocratic device to engineer changes in human behaviour and the environment. Law is a social and cultural process guided by myth and narrative. This chapter seeks new and better narratives to contest the foundational myths of modernity and development that shape our discipline and world. Rather than crafting new norms from the conventional centres of geopolitical power in the West and universalising them, this chapter calls for pluralised value formation that learns from diverse legal traditions. Such a myth protects the environment through transforming the process of global value formation. The chapter first examines how nature shapes mythology, looking at the role of the cosmic horizon in shaping social norms. It argues that the nexus of cosmos, nature and myth-making is not a phenomenon of ages past but plays a role in contemporary international environmental law. The chapter asks whether the discovery of countless Earth-like planets today could help us reimagine our Earth and global community in a healthier way, and considers the implications of our expanding cosmic horizon for rethinking international law and policy.

Nelems argues that today’s democratic morbidity can be located in the ways it reproduces an individualist ontology to undemocratizing effects. Viewed through this lens, the growing backlashes against democracy appear as a symptom, not a cause of democracy’s crisis. However, the boundaries and enactments of representative democracies have long been troubled, stretched and shaped by democratizing processes and movements that reference an ontology of intra-being. Nelems proposes the “ecocycle” within the living ecosystems of tree canopies as a relational model of intra-being through which we might re-examine and re-imagine democratizing and undemocratizing processes. The ecocycle’s two “traps” of poverty and rigidity offer critical insights into the points of connect and disconnect between these processes, as well as the relationship between the lifeways they generate. In their porous, dynamic, entangled, and grounded relationality, tree canopies offer pathways by which the roots of a constellation of democracies might be deparochialized with a view to leveraging the transformative potential of other/wise democracies.

Managerial economics provides a toolbox for solving problems that managers frequently face. It addresses issues relating to any aspect of decision making that ultimately affects the profit of a firm. Although the general methodology of managerial economics has not changed over the decades, there have been rapid and significant changes in the business environment in the last ten years or so, and three new themes have become increasingly important: digitization; behavioural aspects; and globalization. The first of these developments involves aspects of big data and advanced data analytics, the human-machine interface and the interconnectedness of electronic devices. The second relates to psychological aspects of decision making that cause both consumers and managers to engage in behaviour normally referred to as ‘irrational’. The third development is that improvements in technology relating to digitization have made the business world more interconnected. The text makes heavy use of recent case studies involving these three themes, for example on tech firms, Covid-19 and climate change, so students can see how the tools of managerial economics can be applied in real-life situations.

The second chapter concentrates on the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems, providing various ways to conceptualize and define it and then moving on to discuss its importance for supporting economic development. Given the growing body of work on entrepreneurial ecosystems, the chapter first outlines how the field of entrepreneurial ecosystems evolved from existing work on clusters and carries much of its assumptions around homogeneity of actors. In contrast to these assumptions, we demonstrate that actors are not homogenous but heterogeneous and that existing concepts of entrepreneurial ecosystems do not differentiate among entrepreneurs as actors within ecosystems. These arguments are further elaborated on with evidence in the chapters that follow.

This introduction makes a case for a focus on ecological security when approaching the relationship between climate change and security. It outlines the central claims upon which this case is built, noting the significance of this approach in terms of the study and practice of security, climate change and their relationship. It concludes by outlining the structure of the book itself.

This chapter provides a definition of ecological security: a concern with the resilience of ecosystems themselves in the face of climate change. After noting antecedents to this account of security in engagement with environmental change generally and climate change specifically, the chapter goes on to outline the ethical assumptions upon which this discourse is built before defining and defending this account of the referent object of security and the nature of the threat climate change poses to it. It suggests the importance of the Anthropocene context in orienting our concern to ecosystems, noting how this focus, in turn, encourages practices oriented towards the rights and needs of the most vulnerable across time (future generations), space (impoverished and marginalized populations throughout the world) and species (other living beings).

The Yellow River is by its nature not sustainable since it carried the world’s heaviest silt load for a long time. Yet, this silt load (loess plateau) has fallen considerably in recent years, but at the cost of other forms of sustainability, such as streamflow. The reasons for this dramatic decline in runoff are complex. In addition to reducing silt load, terraces and vegetation have led to the marked reduction in runoff. The fall in natural runoff can also be attributed to groundwater and mining extractions, as well as reservoir filling. Population per se is not a major driver of water demand compared to irrigated agriculture and other sectors, notably mining and industry. While China is not a federal system, it is organized in a complex hierarchical system where provinces play an important role and are capable of serving their own interests in negotiating usages and allocations of the river. The chapter analyzes peculiar physical conditions and water management institutions in the Yellow River Basin.