Thirty years ago, the UN report Our Common Future placed sustainable development firmly on the international agenda. The Imperatives of Sustainable Development takes the ethical foundations of Our Common Future and builds a model that emphasizes three equally important moral imperatives - satisfying human needs, ensuring social justice, and respecting environmental limits. This model suggests sustainability themes and assigns thresholds to them, thereby defining the space within which sustainable development can be achieved. The authors accept that there is no single pathway to the sustainable development space. Different countries face different challenges and must follow different pathways. This perspective is applied to all countries to determine whether the thresholds of the sustainability themes selected have been met, now and in the past. The authors build on the extensive literature on needs, equity, justice, environmental science, ecology, and economics, and show how the three moral imperatives can guide policymaking. The Imperatives of Sustainable Development synthesizes past reasoning, summarizes the present debate, and provides a clear direction for future thinking. This book will be essential reading for everyone interested in the future of sustainable development and in the complex environmental and social issues involved.

Sustainable mobility has become the new imperative for transport policy. There have been a number of policy attempts at sustainable mobility globally, such as the development of more efficient conventional transport technologies, the promotion of efficient and affordable public transport systems and the encouragement of environmental awareness. Such policies have so often been presented as prerequisites for sustainable mobility that they are now taken for granted. But are any of these policies really successful? To what extent do they actually contribute (or fail to contribute) to sustainable mobility? Why do some policies succeed and others fail? Using an interdisciplinary approach which brings together various theories and methodologies, this book tests each of these policies - or hypotheses, as the author sees them - with detailed empirical investigations. It also argues that leisure-time travel should be included in any sustainable mobility policies, as it now accounts for 50 per cent of all annual travel distance in developed countries. The book concludes by suggesting fourteen theses of sustainable mobility for the EU and a new model for future best practice.

Sustainable mobility has become the new imperative for transport policy. There have been a number of policy attempts at sustainable mobility globally, such as the development of more efficient conventional transport technologies, the promotion of efficient and affordable public transport systems and the encouragement of environmental awareness. Such policies have so often been presented as prerequisites for sustainable mobility that they are now taken for granted. But are any of these policies really successful? To what extent do they actually contribute (or fail to contribute) to sustainable mobility? Why do some policies succeed and others fail? Using an interdisciplinary approach which brings together various theories and methodologies, this book tests each of these policies - or hypotheses, as the author sees them - with detailed empirical investigations. It also argues that leisure-time travel should be included in any sustainable mobility policies, as it now accounts for 50 per cent of all annual travel distance in developed countries. The book concludes by suggesting fourteen theses of sustainable mobility for the EU and a new model for future best practice.

Thirty years ago, the UN report Our Common Future placed sustainable development firmly on the international agenda. The Imperatives of Sustainable Development takes the ethical foundations of Our Common Future and builds a model that emphasizes three equally important moral imperatives - satisfying human needs, ensuring social justice, and respecting environmental limits. This model suggests sustainability themes and assigns thresholds to them, thereby defining the space within which sustainable development can be achieved. The authors accept that there is no single pathway to the sustainable development space. Different countries face different challenges and must follow different pathways. This perspective is applied to all countries to determine whether the thresholds of the sustainability themes selected have been met, now and in the past. The authors build on the extensive literature on needs, equity, justice, environmental science, ecology, and economics, and show how the three moral imperatives can guide policymaking. The Imperatives of Sustainable Development synthesizes past reasoning, summarizes the present debate, and provides a clear direction for future thinking. This book will be essential reading for everyone interested in the future of sustainable development and in the complex environmental and social issues involved.