This book provides information and resources to city planners and other public policy officials on the importance of smart sustainable cities and their relationship with urban knowledge-based economy. It answers important topical questions relating to urban sustainable development and human well-being, namely, how can we implement policies and programs that can make cities “smart� and boost their knowledge-based development? How can such programs reduce inequalities and enhance the environment where people live and work? The authors suggest a new approach to the creation of sustainable smart cities, not only in metropolises but also in smaller urban spaces. They advance the body of knowledge in entrepreneurship literature by examining both the European regional understanding of entrepreneurship and the quality of life and well-being at city levels. They also provide synthetic indexes to assess the relationship between perceived quality of life and entrepreneurship.  This book stimulates the debate on the role of smart cities in promoting entrepreneurship, which is a currently under-investigated topic in Europe, and is of interest to a wide range of practitioners, professionals and academics in the area of well-being and quality of life research, urban studies, public policy, and sustainable development.  

Encyclopedia of Renewable and Sustainable Materials, Five Volume Set provides a comprehensive overview, covering research and development on all aspects of renewable, recyclable and sustainable materials. The use of renewable and sustainable materials in building construction, the automotive sector, energy, textiles and others can create markets for agricultural products and additional revenue streams for farmers, as well as significantly reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, manufacturing energy requirements, manufacturing costs and waste. This book provides researchers, students and professionals in materials science and engineering with tactics and information as they face increasingly complex challenges around the development, selection and use of construction and manufacturing materials.

Against the backdrop of globalization, digitalization, and the new entrance of Generation Z on the labor market, the economic environment has started to become more dynamic, complex, and uncertain. New management, marketing, and accounting tools and strategies are needed to improve a company's sustainability in the current collaborative economy. Strategies for Business Sustainability in a Collaborative Economy is a collection of innovative research that focuses on organizational tools and practices that may foster a company's success in the new economic context, which is defined by the faster pace of technological progress and the entrance of Generation Z on the labor market. Thus, it analyzes how Generation Z transforms human resources policies and practices and how they change the concept of sustainability through their needs and expectations. Highlighting a wide range of topics including resource management, knowledge-based firms, and business models, this publication examines how business models evolve given the success recorded by newer companies. This book is ideally designed for entrepreneurs, executives, managers, economists, academicians, researchers, and students.

This book presents an introduction to the concept and need of sustainable agriculture, the mechanisms of conventional and controlled release of pesticides, herbicides and plant hormones. It also contains the carriers which supply controlled release including polymers and nanoparticles. A full chapter is devoted to the theory and simulation aspects.

One of the earliest scientific works on all aspects of compost and manure. Still of value today, especially to those interested in organic agriculture. Howard is the author of the very ground breaking "An Agricultural Testament."

Green technology plays an important role in the achievement of environmental sustainability. Tax incentives, carbon taxes, and rising fossil fuel costs are motivating increased growth and development of 'green' products and services, many of which are the result of innovative discoveries in biotechnology and nanotechnology. Green Technologies and Business Practices: An IT Approach is an international platform that brings together academics, researchers, lecturers, policy makers, practitioners, and persons in decision-making positions from all backgrounds who ultimately share new theories, research findings and case studies, together enhancing understanding and collaboration of green issues in business and the role of information technologies and also analyze recent developments in theory and practice.

There is very little argument that the world is facing severe environmental challenges. Ongoing air and water pollution, increasing energy consumption, and the depletion of natural resources have all placed considerable stress on the capacity of our environment to support the present quality of human life in a sustainable manner. Ensuring a Sustainable Future does what few previous works have: it examines these trends' disproportionate impact on the poor and the economically viable solutions that can serve to remedy them - solutions that simultaneously address environmental and economic problems. This gap in previous research, evidence, and writing has left low-income countries often unwilling to take on major environmental problems and many poor communities believing they faced impossible choices between improving the environment in which they live and increasing the jobs and income available. Bringing together evidence-based recommendations and in-depth case studies of successful policies and programs around the world, Ensuring a Sustainable Future examines innovative solutions to this crucial challenge. In doing so, it addresses a comprehensive range of environmental sustainability challenges affecting low-, middle-, and high-income countries.

This book aims to seek for the truth which connects public value and social development as basis to build a harmony community for individuals as well as society. The book tries to bridge science, technology, economics, politics, history, ethics, and environment under the concept of public values, and reveals the essentials of public policy for individual and social development. The potential audience of the book are officials and policy makers in the public sectors, as well as managers in the private sectors.

The Sustainability Debate is the result of a collaboration between academics and members of the Retail Institute predominantly working in retail and packaging industries. It responds to practitioners' frustration with consumers' emotionality and lack of knowledge around sustainability issues, problems often fostered by the media. This fourteenth volume of Critical Studies on Corporate Responsibility, Governance and Sustainability thus puts together a debate that goes beyond the rhetoric of environmental protection and looks at sustainability from several angles. The book is predominantly focused on human and social sustainability and this focus is carried into sections that discuss sustainable policies, media and gender. This volume ultimately moves away from merely discussing environmental protection and shifts to the effect sustainable policies have on people and society. With a scope expanded to include human and social sustainability as well as economic sustainability, this book's original contribution is that is sees sustainability as a dynamic and complex system of human, social and environmental aspects.

This book highlights the need for effective water governance in India given the fact that the country has been facing serious water stress in recent years. The water management in the country needs a serious scientific understanding coupled with the cooperative approach rather than a competitive one. It looks at current water regulations and underlines the need for overhaul of some laws to ensure that high water usage efficiency is attained, groundwater depletion is arrested and management of available resources is carried out in a disciplined manner. It also looks at the role of stakeholder engagement and pricing as a mechanism to manage demand in the wake of rapid population growth and industrialization.

This book provides a broad understanding of whether law plays a role in influencing patterns of sustainable consumption and, if so, how. Bringing together legal scholars from the Global South and the Global North, it examines these questions in the context of national, transnational and international law, within single and plural legal systems, and across a range of sector-specific issue areas. The chapters identify how traditional legal disciplines (e.g. constitutional law, consumer law, public procurement, international public law), sector-related regulation (e.g. energy, water, waste), and legal rules in specific areas (e.g. eco-labelling and packing) engage with the concept of sustainable consumption. A number of the contributions describe this relationship by isolating a national legal system, while others approach it from the vantage point of legal pluralism, exploring the conflicts and convergences of rules between multiple international treaties (or guidelines) and those between the rules of international and transnational law (or both) vis-a-vis national legal systems. While sustainable consumption is recognised as an important field of interdisciplinary research linking virtually all social science disciplines, legal scholarship, in contrast, has neglected the importance of the field of sustainable consumption to the law. This book fills the gap.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This volume shares new data relating to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), with emphasis on experiences in Eastern and Southern Africa. The book is a collection of research by authors from over 30 institutions, spanning the public and private sectors, with specific knowledge on agricultural development in the region discussed. The material is assembled to answer key questions on the following five topic areas: (1) Climate impacts: What are the most significant current and near future climate risks undermining smallholder livelihoods? (2) Varieties: How can climate-smart varieties be delivered quickly and cost-effectively to smallholders? (3) Farm management: What are key lessons on the contributions from soil and water management to climate risk reduction and how should interventions be prioritized? (4) Value chains: How can climate risks to supply and value chains be reduced? and (5) Scaling up: How can most promising climate risks reduction strategies be quickly scaled up and what are critical success factors? Readers who will be interested in this book include students, policy makers, and researchers studying climate change impacts on agriculture and agricultural sustainability.

Are you excited about permaculture but unclear how to put it into practice for yourself? In this unique, full colour guide, experienced permaculture teacher Aranya leads you through the design process from beginning to end, using clear explanations, flowcharts and diagrams. It is based on course worksheets which have been designed, refined and tested on students over time. Linking theory to practice, he places the ethics, principles, philosophies, tools and techniques directly into the context of the process itself. While written for anyone with a basic grasp of permaculture, this book also has plenty to offer the more experienced designer. This guide covers: Systems and patterns ~ Working as part of a design team ~ Land and non-land based design ~ Design frameworks ~ Site surveying and map making ~ Interviewing clients ~ Working with large client groups ~ Identifying functions ~ Choosing systems and elements ~ Placement and integration ~ Creating a design proposal ~ Project management ~ Presenting your ideas to clients ~ and much more. A great reference for anyone who has done, or is thinking of doing, any kind of permaculture course.

Environmental and energy dependency problems derived from high fossil fuels consumption have made necessary the development of new energy models to be renewable and sustainable, efficient, practical and economical, and cost effective, to meet the demand for a sustainable energy supply.Among renewable resources, biomass is destined to play an important role in these new energy models since agricultural and forestry residues are an energy resource that is produced in relatively large amounts throughout the world and regarded as a renewable and environmentally safe way of providing energy.Compiling information on the conversion of energy from biomass, the book focuses on the use of pellets as homogeneous solid biofuels. It describes all the changes that forestry and agricultural biomass undergo to be converted into thermal energy and analyses the inputs and outputs of the process.It has to be noted that the standards used as guidelines and references in all the chapters of the book are there in order to not to forget the thresholds and guidelines established and thus to ensure a proper use.This book guides the reader through the entire biomass-to-energy process, emphasising important aspects and how the quality of the biofuel can be identified. It acts as a starting point for professionals and researchers interested in working with biomass and a guide for those people interested in the implementation of the technologies described.

"From the beginning of this book to the end, it has been Professor Hochmuth's intent to address and educate with a complete synopsis of what he calls '...the wealth of research addressing the challenges' in sustainable growth of vegetables... I believe he has succeeded." (Plant Science Bulletin - Botanical Society of America) Sustainability involves meeting current needs without compromising the ability to meet future requirements. Like other crops, vegetable cultivation faces a number of challenges in ensuring sustainable production. These challenges include the need to improve yields and quality to meet rising demand and higher consumer expectations, the need to reduce the ongoing threats from pathogens and pests. Focussing on temperate cultivation, Achieving sustainable cultivation of vegetables summarises the wealth of research addressing these challenges, from breeding improved varieties to better techniques for cultivation and crop protection. Part 1 reviews advances in physiology and breeding. Parts 2-3 summarise advances in cultivation and pest management. The final part includes case studies on the breeding and cultivation of key vegetables such as carrot, lettuce and cabbage. With its distinguished editor and range of expert authors, this will be a standard reference for horticultural scientists in universities, government and other research centres involved in supporting vegetable cultivation, as well as companies supporting the vegetable sector.

"In conclusion, this extremely comprehensive, accurate and useful volume of reviews in the Burleigh Dodds series is recommended as an important reference for professionals and students alike." ISHS - Chronica Horticulturae This collection reviews advances in understanding and managing key diseases and insect pests of tree fruit. Part 1 summarises current research on what causes key fungal diseases (apple scab, powdery mildew, apple canker and brown rot) as well as viral diseases (apple mosaic virus and plum pox). Building on this foundation, Part 2 discusses integrated fruit disease management techniques such as improved surveillance, breeding disease-resistant varieties, improved fungicide application as well as the use of biocontrol agents. The second half of the book focuses on the ecology of major insect pests (aphids, tortricid moths, mites and spotted wing drosophila). The final part of the book reviews ways of improving integrated pest management (IPM) techniques for tree fruit, from monitoring and forecasting to agronomic practices to methods of biological control and optimisation of insecticide use. With its distinguished editors and expert team of chapter authors, this will be a standard reference on understanding and managing key diseases and insect pests of tree fruit.

Addressing the sustainable energy crisis in an objective manner, this enlightening book analyzes the relevant numbers and organizes a plan for change on both a personal level and an international scale--for Europe, the United States, and the world. In case study format, this informative reference answers questions surrounding nuclear energy, the potential of sustainable fossil fuels, and the possibilities of sharing renewable power with foreign countries. While underlining the difficulty of minimizing consumption, the tone remains positive as it debunks misinformation and clearly explains the calculations of expenditure per person to encourage people to make individual changes that will benefit the world at large. If you've thrown your hands up in despair thinking no solution is possible, then read this book - it's an honest, realistic, and humorous discussion of all our energy options.

Arsenic contamination poses a major environmental problem, especially in Southeast Asian countries like Bangladesh and India. Threatening the health of millions of people due to arsenic's toxicity and carcinogenicity, the major routes of arsenic exposure for humans are either through drinking water or crops. Rice is the crop most affected by arsenic owing to its cultivation in major arsenic contaminated areas, biogeochemical factors in the soil during rice growth, and specific features of rice that enable it take up more arsenic than other crop plants. This book addresses the problem of arsenic by pursuing a holistic approach. It presents the status quo in different parts of the world (North and South America, Europe, Asia, etc.) and provides essential information on food-related arsenic exposure risks for humans, and possible preventive and curative measures for tackling arsenic poisoning. It covers the arsenic contamination status of rice, rice-based products, other vegetables, fishes, mushrooms, and other foods, with a special focus on rice-arsenic interactions. The mechanisms of arsenic uptake, translocation and distribution in plants and grains are also explained. In closing, the book reviews a variety of prospective agronomic and biotechnological solutions to the problem of arsenic accumulation in rice grains. The book is intended for a broad audience including researchers, scientists, and readers with diverse backgrounds including agriculture, environmental science, food science, environmental management, and human health. It can also be used as an important reference guide for undergraduate and graduate students, university faculties, and environmentalists.