The issue of protecting the natural and human-made environment has increasingly occupied the scientific community and public policies in recent years, but it is also a familiar subject of discussion among citizens through the practices and experiences of everyday life. The protection of land resources, the management of water wealth, the preservation of biodiversity, and the challenge of sustainable development are often at the center of public and private discourse. Usually, of course, the technical-economic aspect of the environmental issue is highlighted, either in terms of protecting and prudent exploitation of natural resources or in terms of the "cost of conservation" and cost-benefit economic models.
The modern world, based on the principles of capitalist development and reckless resource consumption, has been facing the dilemma of development or environmental balance for the past 30 years, and perhaps more recently, with guilt for the industrial civilization that dangerously depletes non-renewable resources, degrades rural landscapes, continues to urbanize and marginalize social groups, while exacerbating ecological disasters in poor regions of the planet. These concerns, which touch on different aspects and scientific approaches to the environment, constitute the main core of this edition. Wanting to systematically highlight the social perception of the environmental issue both through an anthropological approach to the relationship between humans and the natural environment and from the perspective of social policy, the individual themes of this book are: a) Society, culture, and the environment, b) Public policies for the environment, c) Aspects of the environmental issue. Sociologists, environmentalists, social anthropologists, geographers, and lawyers shed light on one of the most discussed contemporary issues of the planet concerning the social use of the environment.