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This straightforward book is the only one of its kind to join the literature of environmental ethics to the literature of applied ethics—to describe a life lived in harmony with itself, with society, and with the natural world. Its three chapters focus on morality, technology, and stewardship while encouraging readers to explore a single virtue that will encompass all the requirements of the ethical life and save the environment at the same time. For humans who want to live good and fulfilling lives without compromising the ability of the other species on the planet to do the same.

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Why do we claim to value sustainability while acting in an unsustainable fashion? How can we reduce our consumption drastically and move toward a sustainable social system when our society is specifically based on consumption? These two linked questions are at the heart of this important book, the result of a four-year interdisciplinary study of British Columbia's Lower Fraser Basin.

Taking the slogan "think globally, act locally" to heart, the contributors to Fatal Consumption are theoretical as well as practical. They conceptualize the policy analysis they provide, while also proposing useful tools for those charged with making decisions. Though specific in focus, the analysis in Fatal Consumption can be generalized to most North American urban areas. It offers both an understanding of the present and hope for a sustainable future, counterbalancing a discussion of the opportunities for change with a frank examination of the barriers to such change.

Fatal Consumption will appeal to urban planners, to policy makers, and to scholars and others interested in the relationship between health and a sustainable society. ... Read more

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A Dynamic Balance aims to illustrate the links between two normally disparate literatures -- social capital and sustainable development -- within the overall context of local community development. Since the social dimension of sustainable development is the least understood of what are often viewed as its three imperatives (the other two being the ecological and economic), the book illuminates the importance of understanding this dimension and how it can be mobilized at the community level. This is shown by applied research in a number of small, predominantly rural Australian and Canadian communities.

Given the number of small communities in both countries struggling to diversify from single-resource economies in a context of increasing globalization, this topic touches on several critical public policy issues. The contributors argue that the key strategies for communities to respond to the issues they are facing must be embedded in the dialectics of sustainable development. Unless this critical imperative is met, single-resource economy communities will continue to face ecological, social, and economic collapse.

This book will appeal to both specialists in the fields of social capital and sustainable development, and to wider audiences, such as business administration students, development experts, and public policy decision-makers. ... Read more

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This book consists of selected and revised papers from a conference held in North Carolina that brought together rural geographers from Canada, UK and USA, plus one representative from New Zealand. The papers included in the book are those that focus on agricultural restructuring and sustainability. This subject is of considerable current interest at a time when rural areas in developed market economies are undergoing considerable change. The chapters in the book examine, at various spatial scales, the broad processes and structural changes that are common to all rural systems in developed countries. Different geographical contexts are used to illustrate the uneven development of these processes and the implications for sustainable agriculture and rural systems. Authors provide both literature reviews and original research. The book is aimed at not only rural geographers but also agricultural economists, rural sociologists and policy-makers concerned with rural studies. ... Read more

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"Biotechnology can help improve the environmental friendliness of industrial activities and lower both capital expenditure and operating costs. It can also help reduce raw material and energy inputs and waste"--P. [4] of cover. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from UN Chronicle, published by Thomson Gale on June 1, 2007. The length of the article is 888 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Consolidating political will: we need a new vision of sustainability.(sustainable development planning )
Author: Helen Clark
Publication: UN Chronicle (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 44Issue: 2Page: 14(2)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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This document discusses the concept of sustainability and sustainable development, introducing the various theoretical perspectives used in literature. It identifies the determinants of sustainability and explains issues such as the availability of resources, adaptability/flexibility, homeostasis, capacity of response, self-reliance, and empowerment. The relationship between sustainability, development, non-development, and mal-development, is illustrated with the aid of diagrams, and the alternative paths towards sustainable development are identified. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sustainable gardening (which is taken here to include sustainable landscapes, sustainable landscape design, sustainable landscape architecture and sustainable sites) comprises a disparate group of horticultural interests that share, to a greater or lesser extent, the aims and objectives associated with the international post-1980s sustainable development and sustainability programs developed to address the fact that humans are now using natural biophysical resources faster than they can be replenished by nature. ... Read more

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Our Science, Innovation, Technology, and Engineering are breaking down just when we need it to ramp up. Few realize that sustainable development has always been part of human development and that it was these elements and how effectively they worked which allowed for our life on earth. If we fall down in these areas our only alternatives are war, revolution, and genocide as famine and want grip a naturally increasing human population. This little book is a call back to the fundamentals of Science and Art to solve our most complex problems. Today, our organizations are not capable of the challenges that must be addressed in our rapidly approaching future. It raises some difficult questions and proposes a surprising solution from our recent past. This book is for everyone everywhere as we all engage in trying to build everything - from software to cities. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

author doesn't follow his own advice...
Flipping through this book you can tell that the author is passionate about the topic and trying to make a difference, which of course is admirable, but the book itself comes across as a rambling series of opinions with no references to the academic literature. The author advocates for more emphasis on science, but doesn't himself follow the standard scientific procedures of putting your work into the context of existing work on the topic, citing claims, and presenting information in an impartial way. The author also extensively quotes his own posts on internet message boards. All in all, there are many much better resources on systems thinking and sustainability. The author's ideas might be good, but the unprofessional format ruined any chance he had at being taken seriously.

Timely read for engineers and non-engineers alike
In my opinion the author's work could not be more timely.I would say that engineers and non-engineers alike would be well served to read the book.It is a short read and yet extremely rich in depth and scope. I will attempt to present what I believe to be a few of the key concepts:

We need more leadership and less management to successfully address future challenges; research is paramount to the success of our future endeavors; sustainable solutions draw on 5,000 plus years of civilization--not just the latest trends or technologies; a cohesive systems approach methodology will be required to provide lasting, sustainable results into and beyond the next century; libraries and the premises upon which they were founded are increasingly threatened as "for-profit" organizations continue to corner and capitalize on information that was once free to the people; if well-meaning individuals work together, without hidden agendas, the results can be astounding when conditions are right--"magical" if you will; systems engineering is an open, honest approach to problem solving adopted in the past by great minds, such as Benjamin Franklin as an example offered by the author, but increasingly threatened by the myopic, self-serving interests of the top-down approaches adopted in many of today's organizations.

This is a brief review--not a comprehensive summary.I mentioned here, what I believe to be, only some of the essentials presented in the book.If you like to think about the "bigger challenges" facing us today and tomorrow, this is probably a book for you.I found the thesis highly credible and deserving of attention.

Everyone must read this book
There are many books that talk about decision making but this one lays out an approach that not only has a successful track record but has roots going back to Benjamin Franklin. This technique, formal tradeoff analysis of alternatives, is simple and elegant based on what some may call common sense yet we forget it solved many of our past problems and can be used to solve our new problems. This book introduces the reader to tradeoffs, architectures, modeling, requirements, and then moves into the difficulties of actually accomplishing these tasks in the new dysfunctional organizational settings of today. This book may share library shelf space with Freakonomics, Blink, How We Decide, etc but this book offers a clear and doable proposal and plan for what to do immediately to help us get going with all that needs to be done. A great book!

Great Book
Wow what an incredible book. I could not put it down. It is thought provoking and broad in its scope. Everywhere the reader is challenged with a new idea. All the pieces eventually somehow come together to form a beautiful picture. The book eloquently makes the point that we can not solely rely on the random movement of the markets or privatized government to solve our problems. It offers a proposal for moving forward and provides ingredients for executing the proposal. After reading the book it's obvious that we have had a few decades of lost opportunities. Adding the paper at the end is a nice historical perspective. On the down side the thesis was restated in the book twice. I guess I understand the authors' perspective. It definitely makes the point of what we should do. This is a 5 star book and our policy makers should take a look at this work and consider its proposal for dealing with our energy crisis, global warming, and creating a sustainable world. ... Read more

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Fully edited text arising from a major European Commission research project. The book sets current European transport policy in context and includes forces of change, transport trends, policy responses and impacts on sustainable development. ... Read more

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World human population is expected to reach upwards of 9 billion by 2050 and then level off over the next half-century. How can the transition to a stabilizing population also be a transition to sustainability? How can science and technology help to ensure that human needs are met while the planet's environment is nurtured and restored? "Our Common Journey" examines these momentous questions to draw strategic connections between scientific research, technological development, and societies' efforts to achieve environmentally sustainable improvements in human well being. The book argues that societies should approach sustainable development not as a destination but as an ongoing, adaptive learning process.Speaking to the next two generations, it proposes a strategy for using scientific and technical knowledge to better inform future action in the areas of fertility reduction, urban systems, agricultural production, energy and materials use, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation, and suggests an approach for building a new research agenda for sustainability science."Our Common Journey" documents large-scale historical currents of social and environmental change and reviews methods for "what if" analysis of possible future development pathways and their implications for sustainability. The book also identifies the greatest threats to sustainability - in areas such as human settlements, agriculture, industry, and energy - and explores the most promising opportunities for circumventing or mitigating these threats. It goes on to discuss what indicators of change, from children's birth-weights to atmosphere chemistry, will be most useful in monitoring a transition to sustainability. ... Read more

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This important book presents fresh thinking and new results on the measurement of sustainable development.

Economic theory suggests that there should be a link between future wellbeing and current wealth. This volume explores this linkage under a variety of headings: population growth, technological change, deforestation and natural resource trade. While the relevant theory is presented briefly, the chief emphasis is on empirical measurement of the change in real wealth: this measure of net or `genuine' saving is a key indicator of sustainable development. The methodological and empirical work is bolstered by tests of the predictive power of genuine saving in explaining future consumption and economic growth. Just as importantly, the authors show that many resource-abundant countries would be considerably wealthier today had they managed to save and invest the profits from natural resource exploitation in the past.

Wealth, Welfare and Sustainability will be of great interest to environmental and resource economists, specialists in `sustainability' indicators from other disciplines and also development and growth economists. ... Read more

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This is one of a series of regional reviews of multi-sectoral strategies for sustainability at the national, provincial and local levels, complementing the volume on Strategies for National Sustainable Development. They have been prepared with the assistance of the World Bank, UNDP, UNSO, IIED and WRI.
Each volume summarizes the status of strategies in the region, reviews and analyzes case studies to provide an analytical history and status report on each strategy. The information has not hitherto been available, and will be very valuable for practitioners and policy makers, as well as for students of development and of the regions ... Read more

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As natural forest disappear in tropical and subtropical countries, governments and forest industries are turning to plantations to meet the demand for timber. Taungya forestry has arisen to ameliorate conflicts between foresters who need land for forest plantations and shifting cultivators who need it to plant subsistence crops. Taungya is a system of forest plantations in which peasants are allowed to cultivate crops for the first few years between the seedlings of a forest plantations. Recent modifications to the taungya system include social and economic benefits to participating families.

This book describes the history and current practices of taungya, as it has developed in Southeast Asia since its introduction to Burma in the 1860s, and assesses its strengths and weaknesses. It suggests social, economic and technical modifications that may help make taungya a method for imporving the sustainability of forestry in developing countries (in Africa and South America as well as Asia), and will interest those concerned with tropical forestry, agroforestry systems and rural development. ... Read more