The book is a concise introduction to an emerging field within economics. Drawing on numerous disciplines, including environmental science, environmental and ecological economics and optimal growth theory, sustainability remains a hazy and complex subject.

The author set out with two objectives: one, to bring some order into the proliferating measures, models and management of sustainability; and two, to facilitate access to a complex inter-disciplinary subject area. The book points to practical ways of assessing and enhancing the long-term environmental and economic sustainability of our economies.

The result is a fully international study that should bridge the gap between disciplines and prove to be an essential guide to anyone interested in one of the most important concepts in the social sciences.

Over the past few decades, the frequency and severity of natural and human-induced disasters have increased across Asia. These disasters lead to substantial loss of life, livelihoods and community assets, which not only threatens the pace of socio-economic development, but also undo hard-earned gains. Extreme events and disasters such as floods, droughts, heat, fire, cyclones and tidal surges are known to be exacerbated by environmental changes including climate change, land-use changes and natural resource degradation. Increasing climate variability and multi-dimensional vulnerabilities have severely affected the social, ecological and economic capacities of the people in the region who are, economically speaking, those with the least capacity to adapt. Climatic and other environmental hazards and anthropogenic risks, coupled with weak and wavering capacities, severely impact the ecosystems and Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) and, thereby, to human well-being. Long-term resilience building through disaster risk reduction and integrated adaptive climate planning, therefore, has become a key priority for scientists and policymakers alike. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) is a cost-effective approach that utilizes ecosystem and biodiversity services for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, while also providing a range of co-benefits like sustainable livelihoods and food, water and energy security. This book discusses the concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) - both as a science and as art - and elaborates on how it can be applied to develop healthy and resilient ecosystems locally, nationally, regionally and globally. The book covers illustrative methods and tools adopted for applying NbS in different countries. The authors discuss NbS applications and challenges, research trends and future insights that have wider regional and global relevance. The aspects covered include: landscape restoration, ecosystem-based adaptation, ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction, ecological restoration, ecosystem-based protected areas management, green infrastructure development, nature-friendly infrastructure development in various ecosystem types, agro-climatic zones and watersheds. The book offers insights into understanding the sustainable development goals (SDGs) at the grass roots level and can help indigenous and local communities harness ecosystem services to help achieve them. It offers a unique, essential resource for researchers, students, corporations, administrators and policymakers working in the fields of the environment, geography, development, policy planning, the natural sciences, life sciences, agriculture, health, climate change and disaster studies.

The Energy Transition, the inevitable shift away from cheap, centralized, largely fossil-based energy systems, is one of the core challenges of our time. This book provides a coherent and novel insight into the nature of this challenge and possible strategies to accelerate and guide such transitions. It brings together prominent European scholars and practitioners from the fields of energy transition research and governance to draw attention to the current complex dynamics in the energy domain, and offer elegant and provocative explanations for current crises and lock-ins. They identify multiple energy transition pathways that emerge and increasingly compete, and emphasize the need and possibilities for novel governance. By analysing the complexity of energy transition processes and the difficulties in shifting to sustainable pathways, this text questions the extent to which actually governing energy transitions is already reality, just an illusion, or a bare necessity.

Tourism and Sustainable Economic Development highlights the opportunities and risks of nature-based tourism for economic development and explores selected strategies for sustainability. The prospect of tourism growth is a potential source of major challenges and considerable threats on a number of levels. The concept of sustainable tourism development has thus become the focus of the debate on this subject. This invaluable book aims to provide useful analytical and empirical tools in support of the idea that sustainability is not just about regulating and controlling the negative impacts of tourism. It is also about policies and actions that aim to reinforce the benefits and reduce the costs of tourism, in order to make it more profitable now and in the future. The chapters focused on economic modelling offer a valuable overview of the main issues currently debated at the academic level. The book also illustrates a number of empirical instruments that will provide a useful reference for academics and policymakers interested in how to put theory into practice. This study will be of great value to economists, geographers and to those who have a direct or indirect interest in tourism economics.

This book presents the proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Materials and Sustainable Development ISMSD2019 (CIMDD2019), will include a 3-day Conference (12 - 14 November). Organized by the Research Unit: Materials, Processes and Environment and M'hamed Bougara University of Boumerdes (Algeria) in partnership with University of Reims - Champagne-Ardenne (France), this symposium follows the success of CIMDD 2013-2015-2017 and continues the traditions of the highly successful series of International Conferences on the materials, processes and Environment. The Symposium will provide a unique topical forum to share the latest results of the materials and sustainable development research in Algeria and worldwide.

Afro-Eurasia: Assessing Sustainability focuses on the geographic area where humans originated and first began to make use of the natural world - Earth's largest landmass, stretching from Portugal in the west across the steppes of Russia and south across Africa to the Cape of Good Hope. By examining the history of human expansion, as well as 21st century pressures to address ecosystem damage across the region, international scholars and regional experts weave sustainability into core curricular subjects. The interdisciplinary coverage includes national and regional environmental histories, as well as business and commerce, migration, educational institutions, law and government, and the lifestyles of diverse populations.

This book brings together, in a single volume, an overview of multiple applications of the concept of environmental sustainability, featuring examples of useful methodologies and tools for pursuing environmental targets, experiences and case studies spanning a variety of sectors, embracing both industry and research projects; and case studies applied to very different territorial contexts.

The first section of the book covers methodologies and tools for environmental sustainability, including Industrial Ecology, Urban Metabolism, Life Cycle Assessment, analysis of industrial water footprint and such chemical technologies as Hypercritical Separation Technology (HYST).

Part Two provides case studies of environmental sustainability in specific industrial sectors including electronics, pharmaceutical manufacturing, bio-energy, agriculture, food and residential construction retrofitting.

Part Three explores experiences of environmental sustainability in territorial contexts on a local, regional or national scale. This section includes chapters on sustainability in the Republic of San Marino, the European Covenant of Mayors urban sustainability initiative and efforts to promote sustainability in Italy, Norway and Poland among others. The book concludes with a discussion of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Objective I regions of Italy.

Featuring the contributions of academics, managers operating in various productive sectors and consultants, the book aims to promote the growth and spread of scientific research and technological development for environmental sustainability."

This contributed volume contains the conference proceedings of the Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) conference 2014, Berlin. The included research papers cover a wide range of topics in traffic planning and simulation, including open data, vehicular communication, e-mobility, urban mobility, multimodal traffic as well as usage approaches. The target audience primarily comprises researchers and experts in the field, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

In nature, radiata pine is very localised and an obscure tree species despite the romantic character of much of its natural habitat. That obscure status and the lack of any reputation as a virgin timber slowed its due recognition as a commercial crop. Nevertheless, it has become a major plantation forest crop internationally. It has become the pre-eminent commercial forest species in New Zealand, Chile and Australia, with important plantings in some other countries. It consequently features prominently in the international trade in forest products, in addition to its importance in domestic markets of grower countries. Very fast growth, considerable site tolerances, ease of raising in nurseries and transplanting, and ease of processing and using its wood for a range of products and purposes, have made it the utility softwood of choice almost everywhere it can be grown satisfactorily. Abundant genetic variation and its amenability to other management inputs created special opportunities for its domestication. The story of its domestication forms a classic case history in the development of modern commercial forestry, with trailblazing in both genetic improvement and plantation management; this inevitably meant a learning process that provided instructive lessons, especially for tree breeders dealing with some other species. Paradoxically, the plantation monocultures have played and can continue to play an important role in protecting natural forests and other forms of biodiversity. Given the attractions of growing radiata pine, there were inevitably cases of overreach in planting it, with lessons to be learnt. Economic globalisation has meant globalisation of pests and disease organisms, and the scale on which radiata pine is grown has meant is has been the focus of various biotic alarms, none of which have proved catastrophic. Temptations, remain, however, to pay less than due attention to some aspects of risk management. The chapter structure of the book is based on historical periods, beginning long before any important human influences, and ending with a look into what the future might hold for the species and its role in human and ecological sustainability. Almost throughout, there has been complex interplay between the technical aspects, local social and economic factors, various types of institution, the enthusiasm and drive of some very influential individuals, and tides of economic ideology, threads that needed to be woven together to do the story justice.

Grow your own cut flowers and you can fill your house with the gorgeous colours and heavenly scents of your favourite blooms, knowing that they haven't travelled thousands of miles - and you can make money while you do it! Combining boundless passion with down-to-earth guidance and practical advice, Georgie Newbery draws on her own experiences as an artisan flower farmer and florist as she takes you through: * how to start a cut-flower patch * what to grow * cutting, conditioning and presenting cut flowers * creating a hedgerow Christmas * starting a cut-flower business * where to sell * marketing and social media * a flower farmer's year planner. Whether you want to grow for your own pleasure or start your own business, The Flower Farmer's Year is the perfect guide.

Packaging plays a major role in the environmental footprints of products from any industrial sector, and thus is important to address the sustainability issues of packaging. Packaging and the packaging sector have to be eco-conscious as there are many types of packaging across various industrial sectors and so are their environmental impacts as well. Plastic packaging is one of the most common element and the packaging sector accounts for almost 40% of plastic pollution in the world. Sustainable packaging is the only way forward to alleviate the environmental devastations from the the packaging sector. This book presents case studies and discusses how to make packaging more sustainable for a better future.

The aim of this book is to bring together a series of contributions from experts in the field to cover the major aspects of the application of geostatistics in precision agriculture. The focus will not be on theory, although there is a need for some theory to set the methods in their appropriate context. The subject areas identified and the authors selected have applied the methods in a precision agriculture framework. The papers will reflect the wide range of methods available and how they can be applied practically in the context of precision agriculture. This book is likely to have more impact as it becomes increasingly possible to obtain data cheaply and more farmers use onboard digital maps of soil and crops to manage their land. It might also stimulate more software development for geostatistics in PA.

Tourism is an activity that anyone can take part in, regardless of their age, gender, nationality or level of income. This makes tourism one of the most rapidly developing industries in the world. Despite the number of benefits which tourism produces, it also has significant negative impacts on the environment. To minimise the scope of these negative impacts, joint efforts combining tourism and environmental management are called for. This book examines the application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method and lifecycle thinking as a tool to generate more accurate and holistic appraisals of the environmental impacts of tourism. Looking at the issue of sustainability of tourism operations, the book evaluates how it can be improved. It highlights the potential of LCA to affect tourist behaviour and contribute to tourism policy-making and managerial practice. This book provides a valuable resource for undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers interested in sustainable tourism, sustainable development and environmental impact assessment.

This volume is a compilation of essays that focus on livelihood issues faced by forest communities of the southern Western Ghats region of India. Communities living along the fringes of forests are, more often than not, overlooked in academic and policy discussions. However, they face considerable pressures, being sandwiched between conservation endeavours and the forces of urbanization and commercialization. The chapters in this book provide an insight into the kinds of livelihood issues these communities face and the potential means that can be adopted to sustain these livelihoods. This volume provides a unique alternative perspective by locating livelihood issues within socio-ecological-economic narratives of communities living at the intersection of the three southern Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and suggests directions for policies to address these challenges.

Integrated assessment modelling is an active and rapidly developing field, triggered by the debate on climate change and the move towards the goal of sustainable development. This book provides an integrated approach to modelling, using a transdisciplinary approach. The author summarizes the main issues involved in the changing global system, and gives an overview of the emerging field of integrated assessment. He then presents a general discussion of the methodological principles of a multidisciplinary integrated modelling approach. Existing tools are examined and new methodological approaches are applied to various aspects of the problem of global change. The case studies focus on optimizing climate change mitigating policies, the allocation of emission rights and the the adaptive behaviour of social and biological agents. Special attention is given to the role of uncertainty, especially the subjective interpretation of uncertainties (world views), and the role of adaptive multi-agent modelling. The book concludes with a discussion on future uses of integrated assessment modelling in the global environment. Modelling Global Change will be vital to economists and scientists who have an interest in integrated assessment modelling, global modelling and decision support, environmental and ecological economists and those interested in sustainable development.

Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a sustainable way for humans and their children. Sustainable agriculture is a discipline that addresses current issues such as climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, poor-nation starvation, rich-nation obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control, and biodiversity depletion. Novel, environmentally-friendly solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge from sciences as diverse as agronomy, soil science, molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, economy, and social sciences. Indeed, sustainable agriculture decipher mechanisms of processes that occur from the molecular level to the farming system to the global level at time scales ranging from seconds to centuries. For that, scientists use the system approach that involves studying components and interactions of a whole system to address scientific, economic and social issues. In that respect, sustainable agriculture is not a classical, narrow science. Instead of solving problems using the classical painkiller approach that treats only negative impacts, sustainable agriculture treats problem sources. Because most actual society issues are now intertwined, global, and fast-developing, sustainable agriculture will bring solutions to build a safer world. This book series gathers review articles that analyze current agricultural issues and knowledge, then propose alternative solutions. It will therefore help all scientists, decision-makers, professors, farmers and politicians who wish to build a safe agriculture, energy and food system for future generations.

This book presents the regenerative leadership framework that has emerged from doctoral research and consulting work with successful sustainability leaders and their organizations in business, education, and community. The framework synthesizes the levels of awareness, the leadership styles and behaviours, and the organizational arrangements that correlate most significantly across these domains. Most importantly, the overwhelming majority of the leaders in this work agree that individual and collective consciousness development is critical to transforming the culture of organizations for sustainability and beyond. The term regenerative has not been chosen arbitrarily, but to provide an alternative to the notion of sustainability, which many of the leaders featured here indicate has become insufficient to describe what needs to be done, economically, socially, and environmentally, if we are to ensure a flourishing world for present and future generations. This work in turn has led to the development of the Regenerative Capacity Index (RCI), a tool designed to assess an organization's readiness to engage in regenerative practice. From this evaluation of an organization's regenerative capacity, it becomes possible to design a strategy for regeneration that considers all levels of its environmental, social, and economic impact, both internally and externally, in the local and global community. Among its major findings, the book argues that the more evolved sustainability leaders are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the construct of sustainability, and indicate the need for a profound cultural shift towards regenerative human systems. In this framework, regenerative organizations are driven by a sense higher purpose, and leadership is exercised horizontally and collaboratively. Leaders and followers engage in generative conversations to create desirable futures which are then 'backcasted' to eliminate unanticipated consequences. Throughout, leaders emphasize the critical importance of engaging in personal and collective consciousness development or "inner work" in order to make regenerative practices possible.

This book challenges conventional wisdom by showing how, in some circumstances, improved energy efficiency may "increase" energy consumption. Relying upon energy efficiency to reduce carbon emissions could therefore be misguided. This book explores the broader implications for climate change and sustainable consumption.

This book covers all sustainable fibres applicable in the fashion sector and discusses their importance in the context of sustainability. It is the first of its kind to address all the minute details pertaining to these fibres and to connect these fibres with the world of sustainable fashion. It stresses their importance in developing sustainable apparel, since fibres play a major role as the starting point in the life cycle of clothing.

Forest inventories throughout the world have evolved gradually over time. The content as well as the concepts and de?nitions employed are constantly adapted to the users' needs. Advanced inventory systems have been established in many countries within Europe, as well as outside Europe, as a result of development work spanning several decades, in some cases more than 100 years. With continuously increasing international agreements and commitments, the need for information has also grown drastically, and reporting requests have become more frequent and the content of the reports wider. Some of the agreements made at the international level have direct impacts on national economies and international decisions, e. g. , the Kyoto Protocol. Thus it is of utmost importance that the forest information supplied is collected and analysed using sound scienti?c principles and that the information from different countries is comparable. European National Forest Inventory (NFI) teams gathered in Vienna in 2003 to discuss the new challenges and the measures needed to get data users to take full advantage of existing NFIs. As a result, the European National Forest Inventory Network (ENFIN), a network of NFIs, was established. The ENFIN members decided to apply for funding for meetings and collaborative activities. COST- European Cooperation in Science and Technology - provided the necessary ?n- cial means for the realization of the program.

Energy policy is at a crossroads. Attempts to meet targets for carbon emissions, energy security and affordable energy for vulnerable households are all on a trajectory to failure. Aggressive ambitions to roll out huge off-shore wind, nuclear and clean coal plants are proposed, but without any clear plans on how funds will be mobilized, or transmission and distribution infrastructure developed. In this book Prashant Vaze and Stephen Tindale ask politicians and regulators to consider a different path. Using abundant examples of small scale local solutions Repowering Communities examines how cities, communities and local authorities from across Europe and North America have driven reductions in energy use and rolled out small scale, community level solutions. Among the issues examined are the drivers behind behavioural change, the methods used to secure necessary investment and what government and civil society can do to foster such action on a wide scale. Based on extensive first-hand research and drawing on the latest global energy data the authors provide essential information and inspiration for readers who wish to drive the policies that encourage community-level energy development.

The return to business-as-usual after the economic earthquake that rocked financial markets, wrecked banks and brought to light the grotesque distortions of casino capitalism on people and planet must be resisted. A new form of capitalism is both necessary and possible as some forward-thinking political, business and civil society leaders have now recognised. This book is about the myriad problems that we face and the systemic changes that are necessary for all enterprises in whatever sector and however constituted to operate within sustainable limits, to lower their ecological footprint, to enhance social equity, and to develop a sense of futurity. Waddock and McIntosh argue that enterprise, innovation and creativity, like conversation, caring and sharing, are part of what it means to be human. They argue that we need to redefine our relationship with commerce to reconcile our relationship with the Earth. The authors see the seeds of economic change in new and fundamentally different forms - in entrepreneurship, networks, governance, transparency and accountability - already being planted and beginning to grow. To nurture these developments, they believe that we need to learn to "see" in new ways to begin to recognise their worth and to create a sufficiently broad, coherent and integrated social movement for change that can overcome the momentum of the current system. Incremental change - CSR, for example - will not be enough. Deep change is needed in the purposing, goals and practice of business enterprise. Deep change is needed in the ways that we, as humans, relate to nature and natural systems under severe stress from resource overuse and depletion, a quadrupled population during the 20th century, and human impact on climate. And deep change is needed in the ways in which we relate to each other, use our time and build our communities. This book documents some of the changes that are already in progress and provides optimism that a sustainable enterprise economy geared to innovation, creativity, problem-solving, entrepreneurialism and enthusiasm for life can produce wealth, preserve the natural environment and nurture social capital.

Keith Culver and David Castle Introduction Aquaculture is at the leading edge of a surprisingly polarized debate about the way we produce our food. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, aquaculture production has increased 8. 8% per year since 1970, far surpassing productivity gains in terrestrial meat production at 2. 8% in the same period (FAO 2007). Like the 'green revolution' before it, the 'blue revolution' in aquaculture promises rapidly increased productivity through technology-driven - tensi?cation of aquaculture animal and plant production (Costa-Pierce 2002; The Economist 2003). Proponents of further aquaculture development emphasize aq- culture's ancient origins and potential to contribute to global food security d- ing an unprecedented collapse in global ?sheries (World Fish Center; Meyers and Worm 2003; Worm et al. 2006). For them, technology-driven intensi?cation is an - dinary and unremarkable extension of past practice. Opponents counter with images of marine and freshwater environments devastated by intensive aquaculture pr- tices producing unsustainable and unhealthy food products. They view the promised revolutionasascam, nothingmorethanclever marketingbypro?t-hungry ?shfa- ers looking for ways to distract the public from the real harms done by aquaculture. The stark contrast between proponents and opponents of modern aquaculture recalls decades of disputes about intensive terrestrial plant and animal agriculture, disputes whose vigor shows that the debate is about much more than food production (Ruse and Castle 2002).