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How did climbers from the world's flattest, hottest continent become world-class Himalayan mountaineers, the equal of any elite mountaineer from countries with long climbing traditions and home ranges that make Australia's highest summit look like a suburban hill? This book tells the story of Australian mountaineering in the great ranges of Asia, from the exploits of a brash, young colonial with an early British Himalayan expedition in the 1920s to the coming of age of Australian climbers in the 1980s. The story goes beyond the two remarkable Australian ascents of Mt Everest in 1984 and 1988 to explore the exploits of Australian climbers in the far-flung corners of the high Himalaya. Above all, the book presents a glimpse into the lives – the successes, failures, tragedies, motivations, fears, conflicts, humor, and compassion – themselves to the ultimate limits of survival in the most spectacular and demanding mountain arena of all.

The emergence of climate change as a central political issue around the world, along with growing concern for the environment more generally, has raised the challenge to achieve sustainability as a high order social goal. Yet over the 20 y since the publication of the landmark Brundtland Report on sustainable development, humanity has moved further away from sustainability in many important aspects, particularly at the global scale. This paper provides an overview of the current understanding of how the human-environment relationship has evolved through time, analyzes the quest for sustainability in contemporary society, and briefly explores the implications of these analyses for the trajectory of the human-environment relationship in the twenty-first century. The focus is on an Earth systems perspective. Exploration of the human-environment relationship through time shows a fundamental switch about 200 y ago, when human society shifted from being largely the recipient of changes in Earth system functioning to becoming a global geophysical force itself, rivaling the great forces of nature in magnitude. Contemporary human societies are now on a demonstrably nonsustainable trajectory, especially with regard to climate change, with no sign at the global scale of any change in trajectory. An analysis of the sustainability gap suggests that a crucial missing component in our quest for sustainability is a failure to engage the humanities, along with the biophysical and social sciences, economics, and technology, in the search for solutions. An examination of the ways in which past civilizations have responded to external stresses and the analysis of the contemporary sustainability gap have come to the same conclusion. Those societies that respond to environmental and other stresses by transformation rather than collapse have the capability to question their core values if they become dysfunctional and to drive fundamental shifts in those values, leading to more adaptive and resilient societies.

The emergence of climate change as a central political issue around the world, along with growing concern for the environment more generally, has raised the challenge to achieve sustainability as a high order social goal. Yet over the 20 y since the publication of the landmark Brundtland Report on sustainable development, humanity has moved further away from sustainability in many important aspects, particularly at the global scale. This paper provides an overview of the current understanding of how the human-environment relationship has evolved through time, analyzes the quest for sustainability in contemporary society, and briefly explores the implications of these analyses for the trajectory of the human-environment relationship in the twenty-first century. The focus is on an Earth systems perspective. Exploration of the human-environment relationship through time shows a fundamental switch about 200 y ago, when human society shifted from being largely the recipient of changes in Earth system functioning to becoming a global geophysical force itself, rivaling the great forces of nature in magnitude. Contemporary human societies are now on a demonstrably nonsustainable trajectory, especially with regard to climate change, with no sign at the global scale of any change in trajectory. An analysis of the sustainability gap suggests that a crucial missing component in our quest for sustainability is a failure to engage the humanities, along with the biophysical and social sciences, economics, and technology, in the search for solutions. An examination of the ways in which past civilizations have responded to external stresses and the analysis of the contemporary sustainability gap have come to the same conclusion. Those societies that respond to environmental and other stresses by transformation rather than collapse have the capability to question their core values if they become dysfunctional and to drive fundamental shifts in those values, leading to more adaptive and resilient societies.

Climate change may just be the issue that triggers a fundamental reexamination of our place in the natural world.

Branding has its ancient roots in the wider Mediterranean and the Middle East, as we have seen in the preceding conceptual chapter. Throughout history, branding products, persons, and places - even if the concept did not yet exist by this name - has been practised in the Arab, Ottoman, and Islamic realms. Especially with increasing contemporary globalisation and implementation of neoliberal agendas, the pressure on nations and cities for competitive positioning and worlding has dramatically increased everywhere in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In particular, the hydrocarbon-based ascension of the Arab Gulf countries and their quest to prepare for a post-oil and post-gas era, with Dubai clearly at the forefront, has given pervasive branding endeavours a particular push. Supported by technological advances and in a world of growing postmodern experiments, these places excelled in constructing hyperreal worlds and preparing virtual presentations, which perfectly fit the global attention economy.

Endeavours to establish cities as brands have become a worldwide phenomenon. In the Middle East and Africa, too, cities have started to actively position themselves as attractive tourism destinations and investment sites and are trying to enhance their distinctiveness and recognisability. Gulf cities have become the most prominent - and often emulated - examples. Less attention has been given, for instance, to North African places. Accordingly, this chapter starts from the assumption that systematic approaches to branding cities are still limited, notably for cities of the "Global South."

This edited volume investigates branding in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), including some studies from adjacent regions and the wider Islamicate world. The book critically analyses processes of strategic communication and image building and covers three major objects of branding - consumer brands, place brands, and personal brands - as the regional unfoldings of a global phenomenon. However, the main focus is on place branding - probably due to my own research focus and knowledge of colleagues, but also to a certain preference or fashion in the current research landscape. Often following the example of Dubai, project sites, cities, and nations are trying to enhance their public reputation by means ranging from creating novel architecture and organising attentiondrawing cultural and sport events to announcing strategic urban and national visions. "Green" and "sustainable2 branding has been added to this in recent years. While branding in the Western world and many emerging economies has been meticulously analysed, comprehensive investigations are still missing for the MENA region, except for some Gulf countries. Some of the existing literature, for example on urban branding or Islamic branding, is again very technical and application-oriented. This was the motivation behind compiling this volume, which fills important gaps in the research on branding in this part of the world.

The chapter starts with a short global, initially mostly Western, history of branding. An overview of conceptualisations of branding follows and first contrasts application-oriented literature with more critical studies and insights. It continues by presenting attempts to clarify terminology and discussing some important elements of the branding process, from the variety of its purposes, actors, and addressees to the proposed and employed tools and strategies. Another section pertains to the global macro-contexts in which contemporary branding is said to take place, including globalisation, neoliberalisation, and postmodernisation. Subsequently, some critical considerations relate to a range of political, social, and spatial aspects and consequences of branding. All this will be carried out with a certain bias in favour of place branding, corresponding to the main focus of the articles in the present volume. Most of the references used for this conceptual chapter were published from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, when, after the initiating works, the research field consolidated and provoked critical assessment be-fore it ramified into ever more detailed issues.