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The Global Casino: An Introduction to Environmental Issues (Third Edition)

Posted on: Saturday, 23 July 2005, 03:00 CDT

The Global Casino: An Introduction to Environmental Issues (third edition). By NICK MIDDLETON London: Arnold, 2003, 433 pp, 19.99 (pbk). ISBN 0 340 80949 3

The third edition of Nick Middleton's 2003 book on environmental issues is 55 pages longer than the second edition (1999). As the original edition was published in 1995, this increasingly established textbook is taking on a 4-year cycle much like the Olympics, though that is one global issue not covered. Practically all the chapters are longer by three or four pages, but most of the photographs, tables and figures are the same as in the second edition, as indeed is the bulk of the text. The over-enthusiastic publisher's blurb on the back cover claims that 'this new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated', but closer inspection reveals that most paragraphs are word for word the same. But why alter what was already a wideranging and, at times, inspirational coverage of major issues such as climatic change, desertification and acid rain. The publishers further claim that new features include 'lists of exercises, essay questions and topics for discussion'. These items are not new but have been shifted usefully to the end of each chapter, rather than being located at the end of the book, and some questions have been supplemented but generally not changed. All chapters have a few new references and, especially, further web sites, a useful source of supplementary information which will appeal to student readers perhaps more than to their teachers.

Three initial chapters cover the background contexts of the physical and human environments and introduce the concept of sustainable development. Then follow 18 chapters on key environmental issues. The reviewer can confirm that each chapter can form the basis of a useful tutorial, having gratefully used the second edition in his role as a human geographer obliged to try and cover some physical geography topics by way of introducing some balance to a tutorial programme. Indeed, the author claims that the book emanates from his own tutorial courses at Oxford. The casino metaphor in the title derives from 'the global scale on which many of the issues occur' and which 'represent humankind gambling on the very future of the planet itself.

The initial chapter on the physical environment appropriately starts with a table of annual net primary production of carbon by major ecosystems. Other natural cycles are then introduced, as are time and space scales and concepts of feedbacks and thresholds. Similarly, the introduction to the human environment starts with a very relevant discussion of resources and how different societies perceive them. Human forces behind environmental issues include population growth, technology and its consequences, value systems, the contrast between rich and poor and the problem of imbalanced ownership of resources. The range of Western environmentalism from 'cornucopians' to 'deep ecologists' concludes this useful and concise introduction. Conventional thinking on economics is especially challenged in the third introductory chapter on sustainable development, which contains a nice definition of the concept as 'development without growth in throughput beyond environmental capacity'. Some new material from the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 and on the 'Precautionary Principle' and its advocacy of erring on the side of caution are incorporated in this new edition. The omission from the bibliography of geographer Jennifer ElIiott's book on sustainable development seems an oversight.

The rich and varied set of global issues in standalone chapters, if so required by hard-pressed organizers of tutorials, cover both expected environmental topics such as coastal problems, soil erosion and climatic change, and more interdisciplinary issues such as big dams, waste management, tropical deforestation and war. Generally these issue-based chapters comparatively assess varied information and opinions in a well-balanced appraisal. In this respect the author has refrained from 'going to extremes'. Specialists in any one topic might take issue with a chapter's content, but the generalist geography tutor will be thankful for the range of views covered and the bibliographic and web site opportunities for students to research each issue further. A concluding chapter endeavours to look at strategies, both global and local, which might start tackling environmental problems. The world can learn from indigenous cultures. The North needs to reduce its long history of environmental damage. The South needs to stabilize population growth. The (ex-communist) East needs to modernize its wasteful and polluting technology. This all requires technology transfer from the North and the resolution of poverty and ownership issues. The Netherlands and its National Environmental Policy Plan is suggested as a framework for putting into effect the recommendations of the UN Conference on Environment and Development. Finally, it is advocated that economic growth must be replaced by an emphasis on sustainable development. Hopefully, the related changes in values, beliefs and behaviour might be found in the impressive concluding list of national environmental web sites covering many countries together with international agencies. Can one dare to hope for some results and solutions in the anticipated fourth edition of this increasingly impressive book?

KEITH SUTTON, University of Manchester

Copyright Royal Geographical Society Jun 2005

Source: Geographical Journal, The

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