Regions at risk : comparisons of threatened environments
Regions at Risk draws upon the nine regional case-studies - Amazonia, the Aral Sea basin, the Nepal middle mountains, the Ukambani region of Kenya, the Llano Estacado of the North American Southern High Plains, the Basin of Mexico, the North Sea, the Ordos Plateau of China, and the eastern Sundaland region of South-East Asia - to explore the concept of environmental criticality. Shunning narrow "geocentric" and "anthropogenic" approaches in favour of a more integrative assessment of the trajectories of threat attendant on environmental change over time, the authors have refined the concept of criticality. A classification of environmental threat, replete with definitions, includes four categories: criticality, endangerment, impoverishment, and sustainability.