In Search of Sustainability


Book Description

Leading Australians present their thoughts on what the main issues are for moving towards a sustainable future.




Searching for Sustainability


Book Description

This book examines from a multidisciplinary viewpoint the question of what we mean - what we should mean - by setting sustainability as a goal for environmental management. The author, trained as a philosopher of science and language, explores ways to break down the disciplinary barriers to communication and deliberation about environment policy, and to integrate science and evaluations into a more comprehensive environmental policy. Choosing sustainability as the keystone concept of environmental policy, the author explores what we can learn about sustainable living from the philosophy of pragmatism, from ecology, from economics, from planning, from conservation biology and from related disciplines. The idea of adaptive, or experimental, management provides the context, while insights from various disciplines are integrated into a comprehensive philosophy of environmental management. The book will appeal to students and professionals in the fields of environmental policy and ethics, conservation biology, and philosophy of science.




Sustainability and Communities of Place


Book Description

The concept of sustainability holds that the social, economic, and environmental factors within human communities must be viewed interactively and systematically. Sustainable development cannot be understood apart from a community, its ethos, and ways of life. Although broadly conceived, the pursuit of sustainable development is a local practice because every community has different needs and quality of life concerns. Within this framework, contributors representing the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, law, public policy, architecture, and urban studies explore sustainability in communities in the Pacific, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and North America. Contributors: Janet E. Benson, Karla Caser, Snjezana Colic, Angela Ferreira, Johanna Gibson, Krista Harper, Paulo Lana, Barbara Yablon Maida, Carl A. Maida, Kenneth A. Meter, Dario Novellino, Deborah Pellow, Claude Raynaut, Thomas F. Thornton, Richard Westra, Magda Zanoni




The Age of Sustainability


Book Description

With transitions to more sustainable ways of living already underway, this book examines how we understand the underlying dynamics of the transitions that are unfolding. Without this understanding, we enter the future in a state of informed bewilderment. Every day we are bombarded by reports about ecosystem breakdown, social conflict, economic stagnation and a crisis of identity. There is mounting evidence that deeper transitions are underway that suggest we may be entering another period of great transformation equal in significance to the agricultural revolution some 13,000 years ago or the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago. This book helps readers make sense of our global crisis and the dynamics of transition that could result in a shift from the industrial epoch that we live in now to a more sustainable and equitable age. The global renewable energy transition that is already underway holds the key to the wider just transition. However, the evolutionary potential of the present also manifests in the mushrooming of ecocultures, new urban visions, sustainability-oriented developmental states and new ways of learning and researching. Shedding light on the highly complex challenge of a sustainable and just transition, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with establishing a more sustainable and equitable world. Ultimately, this is a book about hope but without easy answers.




Pursuing Sustainability


Book Description

An essential guide to sustainable development for students and practitioners Sustainability is a global imperative and a scientific challenge like no other. This concise guide provides students and practitioners with a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action in the pursuit of sustainable development, and serves as an invaluable companion to more narrowly focused courses dealing with sustainability in particular sectors such as energy, food, water, and housing, or in particular regions of the world. Written by leading experts, Pursuing Sustainability shows how more inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives can help you achieve your sustainability objectives. It stresses the need for understanding how capital assets are linked to sustainability goals through the complex adaptive dynamics of social-environmental systems, how committed people can use governance processes to alter those dynamics, and how successful interventions can be shaped through collaborations among researchers and practitioners on the ground. The ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate students and an invaluable resource for anyone working in this fast-growing field, Pursuing Sustainability also features case studies, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading. Provides a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action Draws on the latest cutting-edge science and practices Serves as the ideal companion text to more narrowly focused courses Utilizes interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives Illustrates concepts with a core set of case studies used throughout the book Written by world authorities on sustainability An online illustration package is available to professors




Food and Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

Sustainability is one of the great problems facing food production today. Using cross-disciplinary perspectives from international scholars working in social, cultural and biological anthropology, ecology and environmental biology, this volume brings many new perspectives to the problems we face. Its cross-disciplinary framework of chapters with local, regional and continental perspectives provides a global outlook on sustainability issues. These case studies will appeal to those working in public sector agencies, NGOs, consultancies and other bodies focused on food security, human nutrition and environmental sustainability.




Sustainability in an Imaginary World


Book Description

Sustainability in an Imaginary World explores the social agency of art and its connection to complex issues of sustainability. Over the past decade, interest in art's agency has ballooned as an increasing number of fields turn to the arts with ever-expanding expectations. Yet just as art is being heralded as a magic bullet of social change, research is beginning to throw cautionary light on such enthusiasm, challenging the linear, prescriptive, instrumental expectations such transdisciplinary interactions often imply. In this, art finds itself at a treacherous crossroads, unable to turn a deaf ear to calls for help from an increasing number of ostensibly non-aesthetic fields, yet in answering such prescriptive urgencies, jeopardizing the very power for which its help was sought in the first place. This book goes in search of a way forward, proposing a theory of art aiming to preserve the integrity of arts practices within transdisciplinary mandates. This approach is then explored through a series of case studies developed in collaboration with some of Canada's most prominent artists, including internationally renowned nature poet Don McKay; Italian composer and Head of Vancouver New Music, Giorgio Magnanesi; the renowned Electric Company Theatre, led by Kevin Kerr; and finally through a largescale multimedia installation aiming to reimagine the relationship between climate, culture, and human agency. Sustainability in an Imaginary World will be of great interest to students and scholars of arts-based research fields, sustainability studies, and environmental humanities.




In Search of Sustainability


Book Description

What must we do to achieve a sustainable society? There is no one answer. The first steps towards sustainability cover a whole spectrum of economic, social and environmental issues. In this volume Australian leaders from a wide range of fields discuss the key issues we must address if we are to move towards a more just and sustainable future. They identify the major concerns and challenges for achieving sustainability in the areas of: human health, water resources, land use and natural ecosystems, energy, equity and peace, economic systems, climate change, labour forces and work, urban design and transport, and population. Achieving sustainability will require major changes in our current approaches. The thought-provoking chapters in this book provide a solid introduction to the issues in the search for a genuine path to sustainability.




Introduction to Sustainability


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.




The World's Search for Sustainable Development


Book Description

This text traces the evolution of sustainable development and climate change from the time it emerged in international consultations and agreements. The three sections of the book, focusing on the framework, climate change and sustainable development, seek to cover the essentials of the politics of natural resource usage at the global level. The book explores the evolution of sustainable development and climate change within the framework of the United Nations, and the way the concept has been defined through intergovernmental meetings, agreements and consensus within the multilateral system. It also explores the best ways of reducing the risk to the planet while enabling societies to pursue sustainable development paths. The challenges call for a transformation of social systems to facilitate a broadly acceptable change. The book also explores the adoption of low-carbon models different from the high-carbon socio-technical systems and related social practices.