Economics for a Fragile Planet

Economics for a Fragile Planet PDF Author: Edward Barbier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110883082X
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
As global environmental challenges mount, this book offers a policy blueprint for building a safer, sustainable and more inclusive world.

Economics for a Fragile Planet

Economics for a Fragile Planet PDF Author: Edward Barbier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110883082X
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
As global environmental challenges mount, this book offers a policy blueprint for building a safer, sustainable and more inclusive world.

Fragile Futures

Fragile Futures PDF Author: Vito Tanzi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009117939
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book revisits a distinction introduced in 1921 by economists Frank Knight and John Maynard Keynes: that between statistically predictable future events ('risks') and statistically unpredictable, uncertain events ('uncertainties'). Governments have generally ignored the latter, perceiving phenomena such as pandemics, natural disasters and climate change as uncontrollable Acts of God. As a result, there has been little if any preparation for future catastrophes. Our modern society is more interconnected and more globalized than ever. Dealing with uncertain future events requires a stronger and more globally coordinated government response. This book suggests a larger, more global government role in dealing with these disasters and keeping economic inequalities low. Major institutional changes, such as regulating the private sector for the common good and dealing with special harms, risks and crises, especially those concerning climate change and pandemics, are necessary in order to achieve any semblance of future progress for humankind.

The Water Paradox

The Water Paradox PDF Author: Ed Barbier
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300240570
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
A radical new approach to tackling the growing threat of water scarcity Water is essential to life, yet humankind’s relationship with water is complex. For millennia, we have perceived it as abundant and easily accessible. But water shortages are fast becoming a persistent reality for all nations, rich and poor. With demand outstripping supply, a global water crisis is imminent. In this trenchant critique of current water policies and practices, Edward Barbier argues that our water crisis is as much a failure of water management as it is a result of scarcity. Outdated governance structures and institutions, combined with continual underpricing, have perpetuated the overuse and undervaluation of water and disincentivized much-needed technological innovation. As a result “water grabbing” is on the rise, and cooperation to resolve these disputes is increasingly fraught. Barbier draws on evidence from countries across the globe to show the scale of the problem, and outlines the policy and management solutions needed to avert this crisis.

Endangered Economies

Endangered Economies PDF Author: Geoffrey Heal
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023154328X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
In the decades since Geoffrey Heal began his field-defining work in environmental economics, one central question has animated his research: "Can we save our environment and grow our economy?" This issue has become only more urgent in recent years with the threat of climate change, the accelerating loss of ecosystems, and the rapid industrialization of the developing world. Reflecting on a lifetime of experience not only as a leading voice in the field, but as a green entrepreneur, activist, and advisor to governments and global organizations, Heal clearly and passionately demonstrates that the only way to achieve long-term economic growth is to protect our environment. Writing both to those conversant in economics and to those encountering these ideas for the first time, Heal begins with familiar concepts, like the tragedy of the commons and unregulated pollution, to demonstrate the underlying tensions that have compromised our planet, damaging and in many cases devastating our natural world. Such destruction has dire consequences not only for us and the environment but also for businesses, which often vastly underestimate their reliance on unpriced natural benefits like pollination, the water cycle, marine and forest ecosystems, and more. After painting a stark and unsettling picture of our current quandary, Heal outlines simple solutions that have already proven effective in conserving nature and boosting economic growth. In order to ensure a prosperous future for humanity, we must understand how environment and economy interact and how they can work in harmony—lest we permanently harm both.

Ecovillages

Ecovillages PDF Author: Karen T. Litfin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745681239
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
In a world of dwindling natural resources and mounting environmental crisis, who is devising ways of living that will work for the long haul? And how can we, as individuals, make a difference? To answer these fundamental questions, Professor Karen Litfin embarked upon a journey to many of the world’s ecovillagesÑintentional communities at the cutting-edge of sustainable living. From rural to urban, high tech to low tech, spiritual to secular, she discovered an under-the-radar global movement making positive and radical changes from the ground up. In this inspiring and insightful book, Karen Litfin shares her unique experience of these experiments in sustainable living through four broad windows - ecology, economics, community, and consciousness - or E2C2. Whether we live in an ecovillage or a city, she contends, we must incorporate these four key elements if we wish to harmonize our lives with our home planet. Not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over. These micro-societies, however, are small and time is short. Fortunately - as Litfin persuasively argues - their successes can be applied to existing social structures, from the local to the global scale, providing sustainable ways of living for generations to come. You can learn more about Karen's experiences on the Ecovillages website: http://ecovillagebook.org/

Sustainability and the New Economics

Sustainability and the New Economics PDF Author: Stephen J. Williams
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030787958
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
This multidisciplinary book provides new insights and hope for sustainable prosperity given recent developments in economics – but only if swift and strong actions consistent with Earth’s biophysical limits and principles of justice are universally taken. It is one thing to put limits on resource throughput and waste generation to conform with the ecosphere’s biocapacity. It is another thing to efficiently allocate a sustainable rate of resource throughput and ensure it is equitably distributed in the form of final goods and services. While the separate but interdependent decisions regarding throughput, distribution, and allocation are the essence of ecological economics, dealing with them in a world that needs to cure its growth addiction requires a realistic understanding of macroeconomics and the fiscal capacity of currency-issuing central governments. Sustainable prosperity demands that we harness this understanding to carefully regulate the rate of resource throughput and manipulate macroeconomic outcomes to facilitate human flourishing. The book begins by outlining humanity’s current predicament of gross ecological overshoot and laments the half-century of missed opportunities since The Limits to Growth (1972). What was once economic growth has become, in many high-income countries, uneconomic growth (additional costs exceeding additional benefits), which is no longer advancing wellbeing. Meanwhile, low-income nations need a dose of efficient and equitable growth to escape poverty while protecting their environments and the global commons. The book argues for a synthesis of our increasing knowledge of the ecosphere’s limited carrying capacity and the power of governments to harness, transform, and distribute resources for the common good. Central to this synthesis must be a correct understanding of the difference between financial constraints and real resource constraints. While the latter apply to everyone, the former do not apply to currency-issuing central governments, which have much more capacity for corrective action than mainstream thinking perceives. The book joins the growing chorus of authoritative voices calling for a complete overhaul of the dominant economic system. We conclude with policy recommendations based on a new economics that, if implemented, would come close to guaranteeing a sustainable and prosperous future. Upon reading this book, at least one thing should be crystal clear: business as usual is not a viable option.

Common Wealth

Common Wealth PDF Author: Jeffrey Sachs
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781594201271
Category : Economic policy
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Assessment of the environmental degradation, rapid population growth, and extreme poverty that threaten global peace and prosperity, with practical solutions based on a new economic paradigm for our crowded planet.

The Business of Less

The Business of Less PDF Author: Roland Geyer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000427609
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
The Business of Less rewrites the book on business and the environment. For the last thirty years, corporate sustainability was synonymous with the pursuit of ‘eco-efficiency’ and ‘win-win’ opportunities. The notion of ‘eco-efficiency’ gives us the illusion that we can achieve environmental sustainability without having to question the pursuit of never-ending economic growth. The ‘win-win’ paradigm is meant to assure us that companies can be protectors of the environment whilst also being profit maximizers. It is abundantly clear that the state of the natural environment has further degraded instead of improved. This book introduces a new paradigm designed to finally reconcile business and the environment. It is called ‘net green’, which means that in these times of ecological overshoot businesses need to reduce total environmental impact and not just improve the eco-efficiency of their products. The book also introduces and explains the four pollution prevention principles ‘again’, ‘different’, ‘less’, and ‘labor, not materials’. Together, ‘net green’ and the four pollution prevention principles provide a road map, for businesses and for every household, to a world in which human prosperity and a healthy environment are no longer at odds. The Business of Less is full of anecdotes and examples. This brings its material to life and makes the book not only very accessible, but also hugely applicable for everyone who is worried about the fate of our planet and is looking for answers.

Biological Extinction

Biological Extinction PDF Author: Partha Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108482287
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Questions why species are becoming extinct, and how we can protect the natural world on which we all depend.

How to Thrive in the Next Economy

How to Thrive in the Next Economy PDF Author: John Thackara
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0500518084
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A visionary yet practical guide to building a more sustainable future, by one of the most important voices in environmentally aware design Are there practical solutions to the many global challenges—climate change, poverty, insufficient healthcare—that threaten our way of life? Author John Thackara has spent a lifetime roving the globe in search of design that serves human needs. In this clear-eyed but ultimately optimistic book, he argues that, in our eagerness to find big technological solutions, we have all too often ignored the astonishing creativity generated when people work together and in harmony with the world around them. Drawing on an inspiring range of examples, from a temple-led water management system in Bali that dates back hundreds of years to an innovative e-bike collective in Vienna, Thackara shows that below the radar of the mainstream media there are global communities creating a replacement economy—one that nurtures the earth and its inhabitants rather than jeopardizing its future—from the ground up. Each chapter is devoted to a concern all humans share—land and water management, housing, what we eat, what we wear, our health, how and why we travel—and demonstrates that it is possible to live a rich and fulfilling life based on stewardship rather than exploitation of the natural environment.