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Author: Federico M. Pulselli
Publisher: WIT Press
ISBN: 184564140X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
Is the concept of sustainability strongly founded on solid scientific bases? And can this elusive concept be introduced in the economic framework and embodied in people's behavior as well as public and private institutions' decision making? This book presents a view of sustainability that starts from the acknowledgment of physical conditions and limits that humans can no longer neglect. It also includes some epistemological foundations of the concept of sustainability and historical backgrounds. The view is optimistic to the extent that economics, the compass of our industrial society, is open to inputs and suggestions coming from outside orthodox schemes. Transdisciplinary science is one key element of such a change, and this book is a transdisciplinary project.In the field of the criticism to GDP as an omni-comprehensive instrument, the book also describes the methodology of the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), proposed by H. Daly and John Cobb in 1989. They proposed some revisions to the System of National Accounts and GDP in order to add information for policy makers towards sustainability. Starting with consumption, some adjustments are proposed to allow for inequality of income distribution, environmental problems (such as pollution costs, long term environmental damage, depletion of non-renewable resources) and social issues (such as commuting costs, urbanization costs, public expenditure for health and education). Computations for different nations have shown that ISEW increases together with increasing GDP up to a point, beyond which it stagnates or even decreases, due to the environmental and social pressure of economic growth. The ISEW is a feasible calculation and some experiments at the local level in Italy are presented. Advances in integrating different sustainability indicators (both economic-based and physical-based) are also presented as well as their use under a sustainability viewpoint.
Author: Federico M. Pulselli
Publisher: WIT Press
ISBN: 184564140X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
Is the concept of sustainability strongly founded on solid scientific bases? And can this elusive concept be introduced in the economic framework and embodied in people's behavior as well as public and private institutions' decision making? This book presents a view of sustainability that starts from the acknowledgment of physical conditions and limits that humans can no longer neglect. It also includes some epistemological foundations of the concept of sustainability and historical backgrounds. The view is optimistic to the extent that economics, the compass of our industrial society, is open to inputs and suggestions coming from outside orthodox schemes. Transdisciplinary science is one key element of such a change, and this book is a transdisciplinary project.In the field of the criticism to GDP as an omni-comprehensive instrument, the book also describes the methodology of the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), proposed by H. Daly and John Cobb in 1989. They proposed some revisions to the System of National Accounts and GDP in order to add information for policy makers towards sustainability. Starting with consumption, some adjustments are proposed to allow for inequality of income distribution, environmental problems (such as pollution costs, long term environmental damage, depletion of non-renewable resources) and social issues (such as commuting costs, urbanization costs, public expenditure for health and education). Computations for different nations have shown that ISEW increases together with increasing GDP up to a point, beyond which it stagnates or even decreases, due to the environmental and social pressure of economic growth. The ISEW is a feasible calculation and some experiments at the local level in Italy are presented. Advances in integrating different sustainability indicators (both economic-based and physical-based) are also presented as well as their use under a sustainability viewpoint.
Author: Felix Dodds
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136261907
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
Forty years after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the goal of sustainable development continues via the Rio+20 conference in 2012. This book will enable a broad readership to understand what has been achieved in the past forty years and what hasn’t. It shows the continuing threat of our present way of living to the planet. It looks to the challenges that we face twenty years from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, "The Earth Summit," in Rio, in particular in the areas of economics and governance and the role of stakeholders. It puts forward a set of recommendations that the international community must address now and in the the future. It reminds us of the planetary boundaries we must all live within and and what needs to be addressed in the next twenty years for democracy, equity and fairness to survive. Finally it proposes through the survival agenda a bare minimum of what needs to be done, arguing for a series of absolute minimum policy changes we need to move forward.
Author: Nolberto Munier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781402035579
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 460
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Book Description
This book develops a supporting structure for sustainable development, following a natural set of steps to reach an established goal. It provides the tools to navigate this Road to a Better Future by explaining concepts, giving ideas, proposing methods, and suggesting actions. To illustrate the utilization of techniques there are many examples, applied to a variety of activities, and to wrap up concepts, the last chapter is dedicated to the analysis of a community in search of a sustainable environment. A thematic index has been designed to help a person quickly find information on relevant topics.
Author: Steve Thomas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781943359394
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Gabriela Ionescu
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1315341662
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. This new book takes a nuanced look at building a sustainable transportation infrastructure and provides an overview of the harmful effect of various modes of transportation on the environment. The environmental impact of transportation is significant. Transportation is a major user of energy, it burns most of the world's petroleum, and is the fastest-growing contributor to carbon dioxide emissions. Although environmental regulations in many countries have reduced the individual vehicle's emissions, this has been offset by an increase in vehicles on the road and airways.
Author: Claude Henry
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023154491X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498
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Book Description
We are squandering our planet’s natural capital—its biodiversity, water and soil, and climate stability—at a blistering pace. Major changes must be made to steer our planet and people away from our current, doomed course. Though technology has been one of the drivers of the current trend of unsustainable development, it is also one of the essential tools for remedying it. Earth at Risk maps out the necessary transition to sustainability, detailing the innovations in science and technology, along with law, institutional design, and economics, that can and must be put to use to avert environmental catastrophe. Claude Henry and Laurence Tubiana begin with a measure of the costs of ecological damage—the erosion of biodiversity; air, water, and soil pollution; and the wide-reaching effects of climate change—and then consider the solutions that are either now available or close on the horizon and that may lead to a more sustainable global trajectory. What community-driven or market-based tools can be used to promote sustainable development? How can renewable energy and energy storage advances help us decrease our use of fossil fuels? How can we substitute agroecology for the damaging chemical methods of industrialized agriculture? Is international agreement on climate goals possible? Building on the experience of the most significant climate negotiation of the decade, Earth at Risk shows what a world organized along the principles of sustainability could look like, no matter how optimistic it may seem at the present moment. Though formidable obstacles remain to the realization of this significant transition, Henry and Tubiana present the case for collective initiatives and change that build momentum for implementation and action.
Author: Andrew J. Hoffman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351277227
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
This astonishing book invites you into a conversation between a teacher, John R. Ehrenfeld, and his former student now professor, Andrew J. Hoffman, as they discuss how to create a sustainable world. Unlike virtually all other books about sustainability, this one goes beyond the typical stories that we tell ourselves about repairing the environmental damages of human progress. Through their dialogue and essays that open each section, the authors uncover two core facets of our culture that drive the unsustainable, unsatisfying, and unfair social and economic machines that dominate our lives. First, our collective model of the way the world works cannot cope with the inherent complexity of today's highly connected, high-speed reality. Second, our understanding of human behavior is rooted in this outdated model. Driven by the old guard, sustainability has become little more than a fashionable idea. As a result, both business and government are following the wrong path – at best applying temporary, less unsustainable solutions that will fail to leave future generations in better shape. To shift the pendulum, this book tells a new story, driven by being and caring, as opposed to having and needing, rooted in the beauty of complexity and arguing for the transformative cultural shift that we can make based on our collective wisdom and lived experiences. Then, the authors sketch out the road to a flourishing future, a change in our consumption and a new approach to understanding and acting. There is no middle ground; without serious change at the most basic level, we will continue to head down a false path. Indeed, this book is a clarion call to action. Candid and insightful, it leaves readers with cautious hope.
Author: C. A. Brebbia
Publisher: WIT Press
ISBN: 1845645049
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 817
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Book Description
This book contains a collection of papers presented at a series of meetings organised by the Wessex Institute of Technology (WIT) dealing with sustainability, the environment and ecological issues. The complexity of the modern world presents new challenges to scientists and engineers that requires finding interdisciplinary solutions. Any problem solving carried out in the isolation of a particular field of expertise may give rise to a series of damaging effects which can create new and unintentional environmental and ecological problems. Specialisation, while required in our culture, needs to be kept under control by the understanding of the whole, which leads to the need of relying on interdisciplinary teams. Nowadays this can be easily achieved thanks to the massive advances in information technology which ensure continuous and immediate contact between all partners. This collaboration needs to be effective and to produce results that will lead to a better world. For this to happen, it is necessary that different groups of scientists and engineers acquire the necessary skills to be able to talk to each other. Furthermore, they need to understand the social and economic aspects of a given problem, in addition to the scientific and engineering issues involved. The Wessex Institute of Technology (WIT) has a long and very successful record in organising interdisciplinary conferences. The papers in this book are a reflection of the proceedings of some of those meetings.
Author: Robert D Bullard
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1136562664
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
Environmental activists and academics alike are realizing that a sustainable society must be a just one. Environmental degradation is almost always linked to questions of human equality and quality of life. Throughout the world, those segments of the population that have the least political power and are the most marginalized are selectively victimized by environmental crises. This book argues that social and environmental justice within and between nations should be an integral part of the policies and agreements that promote sustainable development. The book addresses the links between environmental quality and human equality and between sustainability and environmental justice.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309262305
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 143
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Book Description
A "sustainable society," according to one definition, "is one that can persist over generations; one that is far-seeing enough, flexible enough, and wise enough not to undermine either its physical or its social system of support." As the government sector works hard to ensure sufficient fresh water, food, energy, housing, health, and education for the nation without limiting resources for the future generations, it's clear that there is no sufficient organization to deal with sustainability issues. Each federal agency appears to have a single mandate or a single area of expertise making it difficult to tackle issues such as managing the ecosystem. Key resource domains, which include water, land, energy, and nonrenewable resources, for example, are nearly-completely connected yet different agencies exist to address only one aspect of these domains. The legendary ecologist John Muir wrote in 1911 that "when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." Thus, in order for the nation to be successful in sustaining its resources, "linkages" will need to be built among federal, state, and local governments; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and the private sector. The National Research Council (NRC) was asked by several federal agencies, foundations, and the private sector to provide guidance to the federal government on issues related to sustainability linkages. The NRC assigned the task to as committee with a wide range of expertise in government, academia, and business. The committee held public fact-finding meetings to hear from agencies and stakeholder groups; examined sustainability management examples; conducted extensive literature reviews; and more to address the issue. Sustainability for the Nation: Resource Connection and Governance Linkages is the committee's report on the issue. The report includes insight into high-priority areas for governance linkages, the challenges of managing connected systems, impediments to successful government linkages, and more. The report also features examples of government linkages which include Adaptive Management on the Platte River, Philadelphia's Green Stormwater Infrastructure, and Managing Land Use in the Mojave.
