Over the course of a year, Jules Pretty walked along the shoreline of East Anglia in southeastern England, eventually exploring four hundred miles on foot (and another hundred miles by boat). It is a coast and a culture that is about to be lost—not yet, perhaps, but soon—to rising tides and industrial sprawl. This Luminous Coast takes the reader with him on his journey over land and water; over sea walls of dried grass, beside stretched fields of golden crops, alo...

In The Edge of Extinction**, Jules Pretty explores life and change in a dozen environments and cultures across the world, taking us on a series of remarkable journeys through deserts, coasts, mountains, steppes, snowscapes, marshes, and farms to show that there are many different ways to live in cooperation with nature**. From these accounts of people living close to the land and close to the edge emerge a larger story about sustainability and the...

The East Country is a work of creative nonfiction in which the acclaimed nature writer Jules Pretty integrates memoir, natural history, cultural critique, and spiritual reflection into a single compelling narrative. Pretty frames his book around Aldo Leopold and his classic A Sand County Almanac, bringing Leopold's ethic—that some could live without nature but most should not—into the twenty-first century. In The East Country, Pr...

The Low-Carbon Good Life is about how to reverse and repair four interlocking crises arising from modern material consumption: the climate crisis, growing inequality, biodiversity loss and food-related ill-health.Across the world today and throughout history, good lives are characterised by healthy food, connections to nature, being active, togetherness, personal growth, a spiritual framework and sustainable consumption. A low-carbon good life offers opportunities to live ...

This book draws on world-wide experiences and valuable lessons to highlight community-ecosystem interactions and the role of traditional knowledge in sustaining biocultural resources through community-based adaptations. The book targets different audiences including researchers working on human-environment interactions and climate adaptation practices, biodiversity conservators, non-government organizations and policy makers involved in revitalizing traditional foods and community-based co...

The Living Land sets out a new 'stakeholder' vision for rural regeneration in Europe. It integrates three themes: sustainable agriculture, localised food systems and rural community development. All three offer ways of rebuilding natural and social capital, and a large 'sustainability dividend' is waiting to be released from current practices - creating more jobs, more wealth and better lives from less.

The concept of Green Exercise has now been widely adopted and implies a synergistic health benefit of being active in the presence of nature. This book provides a balanced overview and synthesis text on all aspects of Green Exercise and integrates evidence from many different disciplines including physiology, ecology, psychology, sociology and the environmental sciences, and across a wide range of countries.It describes the impact of Green Exercise on human health and well-being th...

Most of us live in cities. These are becoming increasingly complex and removed from broad-scale agriculture. Yet within cities there are many examples of greenspaces and local food production that bring multiple benefits that often go unnoticed.This book presents a collection of the latest thinking on the multiple dimensions of sustainable greenspace and food production within cities. It describes the diversity of 'urban agriculture' and seeks a balanced representation between the ...

The world faces a ‘perfect storm’ of social and ecological stresses, including climate change, habitat loss, resource degradation and social, economic and cultural change. In order to cope with these, communities are struggling to transition to sustainable ways of living that improve well-being and increase resilience. This book demonstrates how communities in both developed and developing countries are already taking action to maintain or build resilient and sustainable lifestyles. These ...

'Refreshingly fluent narrative, brimming full of stories and metaphors'Tim O'Riordan, University of East Anglia, UK'A great balance between storytelling and analysis which points to the critical need for gaining control over resources'Jacqueline Ashby, CIAT, Colombia'Full of supporting evidence and clear arguments'Norman Uphoff, Cornell University, US'A wonderful book, put together with such vision and passion'Mark Ritchie, Institute of A...

Sustainable intensification (SI) has emerged in recent years as a powerful new conceptualisation of agricultural sustainability and has been widely adopted in policy circles and debates. It is defined as a process or system where yields are increased without adverse environmental impact and without the cultivation of more land.Co-written by Jules Pretty, one of the pioneers of the concept and internationally known and respected authority on sustainable agriculture, this book sets o...

For most of human history, we have lived our daily lives in a close relationship with the land. Yet now, for the first time, more people are living in urban rather than rural areas, bringing about an estrangement. This book, by acclaimed author Jules Pretty, is fundamentally about our relationship with nature, animals and places.A series of interlinked essays leads readers on a voyage that weaves through the themes of connection and estrangement between humans and nature. The journ...