Book Description

Abstract: Food, water and energy form some of the basic elements of sustainability considerations. This ground-breaking book examines and decodes these elements, exploring how a range of countries make decisions regarding their energy and bio-resource consumption and procurement. The authors consider how these choices impact not only the societies and environments of those countries, but the world in general. 1. Sustainability - Clues for Positive Societal and Ecosystem Change2. Learning From the Past: Why Societies Collapsed or Survived3. Today: Decoding Country Resource Stories4. Fossil Energy Endowments and Externalities5. Forests - the Backbone and Circulatory System for Human Societies6. The Soil and Water Connection to Food: Adapt, Mitigate, or Die7. The Future: Climate Change as a Global Driver Impacting Sustainability8. Where the Past and Future meet: Soils or the Unseen Earth that Nurtures Societies9. The Ultimate Constraint to Human Sustainability: Solar IncomePART 2: Scientific Approach to Decoding SustainabilityPART 3: The Real Country StoriesPART 4. Climate and Soils: Unavoidable Constraints To Solar CapitalPART 5. Societies Adapt To a Quagmire of Resource ChoicesReferencesTo achieve this, the authors review the merits of various sustainability and environmental metrics, and then apply these to 34 countries that are ranked low, medium or high on the human development index. The book assesses their resource capacities and the environmental impacts, both within and outside their country boundaries, from consuming food, water, and energy. The final section uses the lessons derived from the earlier analyses of resource consumption to explore the importance of geography, climates and sustainable management of forests and other natural resources for building resilient societies in the future