A Guide to a Healthier Planet 3: Scientific Insights and Actionable Steps to Help Resolve Climate, Pollution and Biodiversity Issues

by Erlijn van Genuchten

Overview

This successor volume builds upon the previous books with additional chapters meant to inspire readers to take action towards a healthier planet. It focuses on closing the gap between scientific insights on pressing environmental issues that do not often reach the general public, and putting that scientific knowledge in the hands of everyday people who can use these insights to take action against climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. The goal of this work is to share fascinating facts about nature and sustainability to inspire taking action toward a healthier planet, and to provide ideas on how we can take action to solve environmental issues in an informed and easy-to-understand way.

All chapters are based on open-access research articles covering various environmental issues and solutions that are not often disseminated in popular discourse but are nonetheless important for non-scientific audiences to understand and become familiar with. They allow readers to explore the broad range of concepts and issues and recognize the far-reaching consequences, and trigger the desire to take action. Also, each chapter provides concrete ideas of how we as individuals can take action in daily life to make a positive difference related to the issues described. The book is a multimodal work, as it includes images and videos that accompany the text.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031869648
Publisher:	Springer Nature Switzerland
Publication date:	08/01/2025
Pages:	245
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dr. Erlijn van Genuchten is CEO and founder of Sustainable Decisions. With her science communication services, she helps scientists in the fields of nature and sustainability increase the outreach of their results. She does this by writing easy-to-understand articles based on their publications, adding actionable steps we can put into practice in daily life, and sharing these articles with a huge worldwide audience on social media. This allows us all to put scientific insights into practice and contribute to a sustainable future. With her IT-security services, she helps companies increase the security of their web applications by performing penetration tests and reporting identified security issues.

Also, she combines her expertise in these fields as a member of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe task force on digitalization in energy. Her background is in Psychology (PhD), Educational Sciences (M.Sc.) and Information Science (B.Sc.).

Table of Contents

PART I: CLIMATE CHANGE How Climate Change Impacts Drought and our Health.- How Climate Change Affects Plants in Urban Environments and Us.- How Climate Change Impacts Arctic Coasts.- How Climate Change Impacts Natural Sulfur Emissions and Vice Versa.- Climate Solutions: Environmental Education.- Climate Solutions: Renewable Energy.- PART II: POLLUTION How Environmental Pollution Can Be Assessed.- How Pharmaceutical Pollution Harms Aquatic Organisms.- How Earthquake Debris Affects the Environment and Our Health.- How Microplastics Affect Our Bodies.- Pollution Solutions: Recycling.- Pollution Solutions: Reducing products’ environmental impact.- PART III: BIODIVERSITY How Kelp Restoration Impacts Biodiversity.- How Invasive Species Impact Their Surroundings and Biodiversity.- How Applying Synthetic Biology Affects Biodiversity.- How Remote Sensing Can Help Assess Insect Populations.- Biodiversity Solutions: Smart Pest Management.- Biodiversity Solutions: Biodiversity Conservation Initiatives.