Global food security is dependent on ecologically viable production systems, but current agricultural practices are often at odds with environmental sustainability. Resolving this disparity is a huge task, but there is much that can be learned from traditional food production systems that persisted for thousands of years. Ecoagriculture for a Sustainable Food Future describes the ecological history of food production systems in Australia, showing how Aboriginal food systems collapsed when European farming methods were imposed on bushlands. The industrialised agricultural systems that are now prevalent across the world require constant input of finite resources, and continue to cause destructive environmental change. This book explores the damage that has arisen from farming systems unsuited to their environment, and presents compelling evidence that producing food is an ecological process that needs to be rethought in order to ensure resilient food production into the future. Cultural sensitivity warning Readers are warned that there may be words and descriptions that may be culturally sensitive, and which might not normally be used in certain public or community contexts. This publication may also contain terms and annotations that reflect the historical attitude of the author or the period in which the item was written and is considered inappropriate today. FEATURES: Offers a relevant and topical look at the way current food production is negatively impacting on our environment, and the lessons that can be learnt from the past. Uses accessible language to introduce key concepts including Social Ecological Systems, agroecosystems, resilience, sustainability and traditional ecological knowledge. Provides examples of present and possible future adaptive pathways that would work within the constraints of nature in Australia, and worldwide.

This third volume on detox fashion highlights sustainable wastewater treatment methods, as well as techniques used by and the adoption of detox strategies by different brands in the textile sector. These aspects are addressed in three central chapters: Sustainable Wastewater Treatment Technologies; Review of the Utilization of Plant-based Natural Coagulants as Alternatives to Textile Wastewater Treatment; and New Waste Management through Collaborative Business Models for Sustainable Innovation.

This book identifies, analyzes and discusses the current trends of digitalized, decentralized, and networked physical value creation by focusing on the particular example of 3D printing. In addition to evaluating 3D printing's disruptive potentials against a broader economic background, it also addresses the technology's potential impacts on sustainability and emerging modes of bottom-up and community-based innovation. Emphasizing these topics from economic, technical, social and environmental perspectives, the book offers a multifaceted overview that scrutinizes the scenario of a fundamental transition: from a centralized to a far more decentralized system of value creation.

The world is changing. Human population is surging towards 10 billion, food, water, climate and energy security are all at risk. Nitrogen could be our life raft in this global 'perfect storm'. Get it right and it can help to feed billions, fuel our cars and put a dent in global warming. Get it wrong and it will make things a whole lot worse.

Freedom Mazwi examines patterns of agricultural finance in Zimbabwe since the radical Fast Track Land Resettlement Programme (FTLRP) was implemented in 2000-and, especially, the varying impact that the FTLRP reforms have had not only on land use, but also on the well-being of farmers.Focusing on contract farming in the tobacco and sugarcane sectors, Mazwi offers penetrating insights into social contradictions and power relations in Zimbabwe's rural areas. He also assesses the institutional finance mechanisms that have emerged in response to the radical land reforms and reflects on the related political and economic isolation of the country since 2000. Not least, he suggests how agrarian policy could be restructured to better benefit small-scale farmers.

Materials, transformed from natural resources into the buildings, equipment, vehicles and goods that underpin our remarkable lifestyle, are made with amazing efficiency. But our growing demand is not sustainable. This optimistic and richly-informed book evaluates all the options and explains how we can greatly reduce the amount of material demanded and used in manufacturing, while still meeting everyone's needs. "Instead of the usual ya-boo about sustainability, this is a pragmatic guide to getting more value from less stuff. Researched with long-term co-operation from industry, it emphasizes facts and evidence but is aimed at a popular readership." - BBC News Magazine "A valuable, impartial expert source in an important debate." - Boing Boing

This handbook brings together recent advances in the areas of supply chain optimization, supply chain management, and life-cycle cost analysis of bioenergy. These topics are important for the development and long-term sustainability of the bioenergy industry. The increasing interest in bioenergy has been motivated by its potential to become a key future energy source. The opportunities and challenges that this industry has been facing have been the motivation for a number of optimization-related works on bioenergy. Practitioners and academicians agree that the two major barriers of further investments in this industry are biomass supply uncertainty and costs. The goal of this handbook is to present several cutting-edge developments and tools to help the industry overcome these supply chain and economic challenges. Case studies highlighting the problems faced by investors in the US and Europe illustrate the impact of certain tools in making bioenergy an economically viable energy option.

This book introduces the influence and impacts of green economy and green growth on sustainable economic development. Combining empirical and theoretical information, it provides detailed descriptions of state-of-the-art approaches, methods and initiatives from around the globe that illustrate green policies and demonstrate how green growth can be implemented on an international scale. It also includes analyses of specific issues, such as public policies and sustainable development plans that influence industry and increase trade in environmental goods and services - the way to a greener economy, green tourism, green agriculture, green learning and green equilibrium in modern society. Matters such as green procurement, environmentally oriented implementation strategies, and the importance of employee skills in the development of a sustainable future workforce are described, as well as a selection of tools that can be used to foster sustainable growth, green economies and green growth. The book also offers a timely contribution to the dissemination of approaches and methods that improve the way we perceive and utilize natural resources and the technologies designed to protect them. Puts forward new ideas for creating a more sustainable future.

Public opinion polls consistently reveal the lack of confidence, disillusionment, and mistrust that citizens feel toward government. Daniels and his contributors believe that the relationship between citizens and their governments can be changed by facilitating greater citizen collaboration with government, particularly through local sustainable programs. As the case studies show, often sustainable community programs are created through grassroots movements that are initiated and managed by citizens themselves, bringing them in contact with their local elected and appointed officials. Unlike traditional programs that are administered by local officials on behalf of their citizens, once sustainable community programs are created, citizens administer their own programs in collaboration with local officials.

The case studies look at a variety of sustainable programs, primarily in the United States, that help to deal with issues such as recycling, transportation, microcredit, site redevelopment, pollution, health care, and hunger. "Creating Sustainable Community Programs" is the first book on sustainable programs that is intended for an audience of public administration scholars, researchers, and students as well as practitioners who are searching for ways to change the relationship between citizens and their governments.

This book highlights the challenges in sustainable wet processing of textiles, natural dyes, enzymatic textiles and sustainable textile finishes. Textile industry is known for its chemical processing issues and many NGO's are behind the textile sector to streamline its chemical processing, which is the black face of clothing and fashion sector. Sustainable textile chemical processes are crucial for attaining sustainability in the clothing sector. Seven comprehensive chapters are aimed to highlight these issues in the book.

This book examines the mechanisms and strategies farmers in North Australia adopt to manage the setbacks and challenges they face. This social research is based on farmers' experiences, but also draws on the author's own experience after his tropical fruit farm was destroyed by two Category 5 cyclones in five years. Through historical analysis, the book compares historic and contemporary aspirations for northern development, and discusses the influence of the built environment on individuals as well as access to health and other social services. Exploring the implications of individual resilience strategies for policy development within the broader context of northern development and evolving environmental governance, the book also highlights the fact that this is occurring in a new geological epoch - the Anthropocene. The book will provide a unique perspective and understanding to government, individuals and industries interested in northern Australia and its relationship to the world

This first volume on detox fashion discusses various interesting topics including a Toxic-Free Supply Chain for Textiles and Clothing; Environmental Issues in Textiles; Global Regulations, Restrictions & Research; Making the Change: Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Fashion; and Strategies for Detoxing Your Wardrobe. It provides an overview of the chemical-related issues confronting the fashion sector, summarizes global regulations, and discusses how to make the change by changing consumers' attitude towards adopting sustainable fashion, as well as the best strategies for detoxing our wardrobes.

The book presents a broad overview of emerging smart grid technologies and communication systems, offering a helpful guide for future research in the field of electrical engineering and communication engineering. It explores recent advances in several computing technologies and their performance evaluation, and addresses a wide range of topics, such as the essentials of smart grids for fifth generation (5G) communication systems. It also elaborates the role of emerging communication systems such as 5G, internet of things (IoT), IEEE 802.15.4 and cognitive radio networks in smart grids. The book includes detailed surveys and case studies on current trends in smart grid systems and communications for smart metering and monitoring, smart grid energy storage systems, modulations and waveforms for 5G networks. As such, it will be of interest to practitioners and researchers in the field of smart grid and communication infrastructures alike.

The book focuses on food security highlighting the role of indigenous knowledge and scientific research in addressing the plight of poor small-scale agricultural producers. Rapidly growing global population and global policies and management governing sustainability, hunger, food security and poverty alleviation are discussed. Additionally, impacts of probable climate change, research on land productivity and performance of dependable food crops i.e. cassava and pearl millet are discussed. Analyzed in great detail are roles of small stock, urban/peri-urban agriculture and advantages of climate-smart agriculture and participatory research in enhancing food security of the small-scale agricultural producers in Southern Africa.

This book discusses the connection between fast fashion brands and customer-centric sustainability. It highlights what consumers can do with fast fashion and the important aspects that need to be addressed to make fast fashion sustainable. Fast fashion is an inevitable element in today's fashion business cycle and its adverse impacts on sustainable fashion are a major issue.

This book describes approaches, opinions, and concepts for new and emerging solutions and technologies that could be successfully applied in the configuration, optimization and management of supply networks in the highly volatile environment of today's global economy. It features numerous case studies and quantitative research from different sectors and different countries. The authors, which include academics and managers alike, present tips on technical, organizational, financial and social aspects of implementing the new SMART solution. Dynamic and changing market conditions have made it necessary for companies to act in networks to maintain their competitive position. Accordingly, they have to adapt their own actions to those of other market players, which requires a SMART attitude: today's supply networks need to be Sustainable, Modern, Adaptive, Robust and innovative Technology-oriented. For example, this concerns making decisions about the extent to which a business model should be green or lean. In turn, these decisions impact logistics, IT, environmental issues and co-operation between suppliers, customers, competitors, and complementors.

Traditional farming systems have dominated the agricultural sector for the past few centuries. However, the past few years have proven that new, non-traditional farming methods, such as passive and non-passive solar drying, are essential in the wake of diminishing food production globally. Optimizing the Use of Farm Waste and Non-Farm Waste to Increase Productivity and Food Security: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a crucial reference source that provides vital research on the application of enhanced productivity, flexibility, competitiveness, and sustainability within an individual farming enterprise to promote food security. While highlighting topics such as biogas production, food distribution network, and aquaculture diversification, this publication explores utilizing farm waste in a circular approach to optimize material utilization in a farming system to realize a zero-waste scenario and the methods individual farms can practice to operate sufficiently to become successful and contribute to the attainment of national food security. This book is ideally designed for policymakers, farmers, researchers, agriculture engineers, environmental engineers, and development specialists seeking current research on non-farm waste contributions as sources of raw materials.

This book pursues a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach in order to analyze the relationship between water and food security. It demonstrates that most of the world's economies lack sufficient water resources to secure their populations' food requirements and are thus virtual importers of water. One of the most inspiring cases, which this book is rooted in, is Italy: the third largest net virtual water importer on earth. The book also shows that the sustainability of water depends on the extent to which societies recognize and take into account its value and contribution to agricultural production. Due to the large volumes of water required for food production, water and food security are in fact inextricably linked. Contributions from leading international experts and scholars in the field use the concepts of virtual water and water footprints to explain this relationship, with an eye to the empirical examples of wine, tomato and pasta production in Italy. This book provides a valuable resource for all researchers, professionals, policymakers and everyone else interested in water and food security.

Fungal nanobionics has great prospects for developing new products with industrial, agriculture, medicine and consumer applications in a wide range of sectors. The fields of chemical engineering, agri-food, biochemical, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and medical device development all employ fungal products, with fungal nanomaterials currently used in a wide range of applications, ranging from drug development to food industry and agricultural sector. The fungal agents emerge as an environmentally friendly, clean, non-toxic agent for the biogenic metal nanoparticles and employs both intracellular and extracellular methods. The simplicity of scaling up and downstream processing and the presence of fungal mycelia affording an increased surface area provide key advantages. In addition, the larger spectrum of synthesized nanoparticle morphologies and the substantially faster biosynthesis rate in cell-free filtrate (due to the higher amount of proteins secreted in fungi) make this a particularly enticing route. Understanding the diversity of fungi in assorted ecosystems, as well as their interactions with other microorganisms, animals and plants, is essential to underpin real and innovative technological developments and the applications of metal nanoparticles in many disciplines including agriculture, catalysis, and biomedical biosensors. Importantly, biogenic fungal nanoparticles show significant synergistic characteristics when combined with antibiotics and fungicides to offer substantially greater resistance to microbial growth and applications in nanomedicine ranging from topical ointments and bandages for wound healing to coated stents.

This book proposes an integrated approach to sustainability reporting, the goal being to overcome certain limitations of the well-established additive approach, where the reporting of environmental, social and economic issues is sequential, but separate. It argues that, in order to successfully communicate its commitment to sustainability, a company should report on how environmental and social issues impact its way of doing business, namely its business model, contributing to value creation. Thus, a reporting framework for business models that encompasses sustainability is presented. In turn, a number of illustrative examples are examined to show how business model reporting could be optimally used to provide effective and integrated sustainability reporting. The book also offers a broad analysis of corporate sustainability reporting, which includes a discussion of the theoretical background, an explanation of why companies provide sustainability reporting, a description of the current regulatory framework for sustainability disclosure, and a review of sustainability reporting literature that shows the main characteristics of sustainability disclosure practices. Given its scope, the book will be of interest to all researchers and practitioners working for companies or organizations that aim to support, implement and improve their sustainability reporting, by adopting a more integrated approach that interconnects environmental and social aspects with the economic and financial results via the business model. The book also offers a valuable reference guide for social science researchers, including PhD students, interested in a discussion of the latest literature on sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and the communication of business models.

This book addresses space science and communication - one of the main pillars of space science sustainability, an area that has recently become of great importance. In this regard, research and development play a crucial role in sustainability development. However, obtaining essential data in the physical world to interpret the universe and to predict what could happen in the future is a challenging undertaking. Accordingly, providing valid information to understand trends, evaluate needs, and create sustainable development policies and programs in the best interest of all the people is indispensable. This book was prepared in conjunction with the fifth meeting of the 2017 International Conference on Space Science and Communication (IconSpace2017), held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 3-5 May 2017 to introduce graduate stuandents, researchers, lecturers, engineers, geospatialists, meteorologists, climatologists, astronomers and practitioners to the latest applications of space science, telecommunications, meteorology, remote sensing and related fields. The individual papers discuss a broad range of space science and technology applications, e.g. the formation of global warming from space, environmental and remote sensing, communication systems, and smart materials for space applications.

This book covers the multi-faceted incentives, trade-offs, and challenges associated with the economics and politics of resource efficiency investments. By contributing a wide range of empirical evidence, practitioners' insights, and policy perspectives, this book carefully examines the role of resource efficiency in reconciling environmental and economic considerations. It also discusses the critical role of resource efficiency investments in mitigating climate change and enabling sustainable development. Featuring expert insights from academia, the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, this book provides a policy oriented guide, reference, and toolbox for unlocking the potential of resource efficiency. To this end, it identifies practical measures for overcoming barriers and creating smart incentives for leveraging resource efficiency investments. Overall, this book brings together evidence to develop innovative ideas and strategies for improving the efficient use of resources and advancing clean and sustainable development. "This book is an important and timely contribution", Angel Gurria, Secretary General, OECD

This book aims to identify the challenges presented by current urban environmental governance practices in fast growing Indian cities, to propose changes to the current governance implementation strategies, and to explore the best practices to achieve sustainable urban models through Indian and global perspectives. With a focus on the city of Bengaluru, the book draws on extensive reviews of literature and data to present current trends and statuses of environmental resource use in growing urban centres of India.The book analyzes the situations that impact urban environmental governance decisions and outcomes and proposes solutions to address these issues for long-term sustainability. Policy makers, researchers, academics and development practitioners in environmental politics and urban governance will find this work of great interest. The book starts by examining different urban environmental threats on global and domestic levels, and provides evidence for the effectiveness of sustainable efforts to curb the impact of crisis-like scenarios. Then the book discusses the role of institutional regimes in influencing urban environmental outcomes through policies, and analyzes the role of various actors in the evolution of urban environmental governance from a legal perspective at global and local scales. In the final chapters, the book explores the trends and status of environmental resource management in Bangalore Metropolitan Area (BMA), and examines the dynamics of local institutions and governance structures for regulating environmental governance for promoting effective sustainable environmental governance in Bengaluru.