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This introductory chapter defines processes of global environmental change and globalization. It shows that although both processes have been going on for centuries, the speed, scale, and spatial extent of each process has dramatically increased over the past few decades. The chapter also introduces the concept of double exposure. Double exposure is a metaphor for cases where a particular region, sector, social group, or ecological area is simultaneously confronted by exposure to both global environmental change and globalization. Double exposure is also an analytical framework that highlights the interactions between global environmental change and globalization. The framework shows how these interactions are contributing to growing inequalities, increasing vulnerabilities, and accelerating and unsustainable rates of change. At the same time, the double exposure framework reveals possibilities for using the interactions to generate openings and opportunities that will enhance human security.

This chapter presents a conceptual framework for investigating the interactions between global environmental change and globalization. The double exposure framework shows how the two processes are continually transforming the context in which individuals regions, communities, and social groups experience and respond to change. The framework raises critical questions about human security that are often ignored in the separate discourses on each process: Who is negatively or positively affected by both global environmental change and globalization? How does each process influence vulnerability and capacity to respond to the other process? In what ways does globalization contribute to global environmental change, and vice versa? What are the implications of these interactions for efforts to promote sustainability? By demonstrating how the two processes overlap and interact, the double exposure framework captures the multi-dimensional character of the changes taking place under the both global environmental change and globalization.

The world's ocean represents 70% of the earth's surface and contains 97% of the entire planet's water. It is a primary driver in the cycles of water and carbon and, through its huge capacity to store heat, plays a crucial role in the regulation of weather and climate. Its biota secure life: marine phytoplankton is responsible for almost half of the oxygen we inhale, and marine fish and shellfish provides food, employment, and livelihood opportunities to millions of people. Yet the oceans are under increasing pressure: three out of every four fish stocks are either fully exploited or overexploited, and the number of people living within 150 km of the coast is expected to increase to a staggering 6.7 million by 2050. This chapter places the oceans in the context of the earth system, discusses its variability and change, the uses we have of its goods and services, and introduces the challenges of sustainable management. It concludes by explaining how the book addresses the issues raised and introduces the rest of the chapters.

The US National Parks were born in public conflicts and conflicts continue in the 21st century. Differing values and uncertainty about facts, values, and the mission of US National Parks make such conflicts almost inevitable. Global environmental change will exacerbate them. Environmental decision sciences offer insights and tools that can lead to better decisions even in the face of uncertainty and conflict. Uncertainty makes national park decisions a form of adaptive risk management (ARM). ARM can be improved by linking scientific analysis to public deliberation, engaging multiple forms of expertise, building evaluation into decisions, and making use of bridging organizations to span the diverse set of parties interested in or affected by decisions about parks. By helping design ARM processes, environmental decision sciences can make important science contributions for parks. In turn, national parks can contribute to environmental decision sciences by serving as a testbed for the study of conflict and decision making.

This chapter, which deals with the performance evaluation, assessment, and causal significance of environmental and nonenvironmental institutions, shares the focus of the previous one: Institutions as the main independent variable of interest. It also discusses important dimensions, methodology, scales, and metrics in evaluating the performance of institutions, along with definitions and terminology. The author argues that behavior change should be considered as the litmus test for the performance of institutions rather than the next-best alternative to environment quality. The chapter also addresses issues such as how to evaluate institutional performance as well as important characteristics to consider for assessment. The goal is to classify how much an institution committed to whatever improvement was made toward a specified objective that influenced global environmental change.

In the twenty-first century, globalization of trade, travel, and culture is likely to impose complex effect on health protection: increased trade is likely to improve material access and services but also bring harm to health and the environment; travel and human migration enrich human experience but also exacerbate health threats such as the rapid dissemination of communicable diseases; and globalized food production and ineffective regulation of food production have led to adverse human health outcomes. This chapter discusses ideas that bridge traditional public health disciplines and concepts to enable multidisciplinary actors to examine, plan, act, and implement together to protect human health and well-being. This chapter also explains how health protection might be linked to some important global policies such as Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda. Specifically, ‘One Health’, ‘planetary health’, and ‘sustainable development’ allow the conceptualization of the relationship between human, other living organisms, and eco-system.

This chapter considers the general mechanisms through which rapid global change can alter interactions with other species. It outlines the observed effects of environmental change on different types of species interactions such as mutualism, competition, parasitism, and consumer-resource interactions. It discusses how ecological networks modify the drivers of global environmental change, and their role in determining the community-wide effect of any particular global change driver. It discusses recent advances in understanding the consequences of networks regarding the effects of environmental changes on species interactions. It also explains how the effects of global change on species interactions are complex and extensive, and highlights the need to further examine the effects of multiple global change drivers on interactions among species and throughout ecological networks.

This chapter examines the developmental challenges faced by Bangladesh during the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and how the country attempted to overcome them. The MDGs were conceptualised with the aim of reducing some of the world's major human development challenges by 2015. However, a number of contemporary global challenges, such as economic recession and environmental degradation, made it difficult for some countries to achieve the MDGs by 2015. This was particularly true for the poor and marginalised populations in the Global South. The chapter first provides an overview of the history, achievements and challenges of the MDGs before discussing the challenges within the Bangladesh context, including: a large population, massive poverty, inequality, global environmental changes, weak governance and confrontational politics, politically motivated communal and ethnic violence, weak civil society and unstable economy. It also considers the potential success of the Post-2015 Development Agenda taking into account all future challenges.

Mutualisms are critically important in maintaining the biodiversity and functioning of ecosystems. Mutualisms include a diverse array of interactions that result in reciprocal positive effects for both partners, including plant–pollinator, plant–seed disperser, and plant–rhizobia interactions. There is growing recognition that global environmental change can affect the ecological outcomes of mutualisms, but less attention has been paid to how urbanization in particular affects their evolution. This chapter builds from an ecological perspective and considers how urban landscapes may affect the evolutionary ecology of mutualism. It reviews the adaptive evolutionary processes that could affect mutualism in urban landscapes. It then surveys transportation, protection, and nutritional mutualisms to assess how urbanization may affect these mutualistic interactions in an evolutionary framework. The survey described in the chapter highlights a dearth of empirical and theoretical investigations on urban mutualisms from an evolutionary perspective despite potentially strong changes in selection pressures in urban areas. The chapter ends by outlining research directions to further the study of the evolutionary ecology of mutualisms in urban landscapes.

David Wood discusses the well-known problem that until now little has been done to address global environmental change, especially climate change, that threatens life as we know it. We humans are shortsighted, unwilling to act in our long-term interest. Reason alone will not inspire us to act in the interest of future generations; we also need the power of imagination to overcome our indifference and indolence. If our inability to act responsibly is indeed a failure of the imagination, art might be an eminent resource to steer us in the right direction. Hence Wood’s question: Can only art save us now? Can art bridge the imagination gap, to make our potentially catastrophic future vividly plausible, and to open up space for alternative, less “toxic”, forms of living and dwelling? To answer this question, Wood turns to Heidegger, and especially to his essay “The Origin of the Work of Art”. Following in the footsteps of Heidegger, Wood considers art as event of disclosure or uncovering that might open onto modes of dwelling that are less destructive than the current ones.