This exciting new reader in environmental history provides a framework for understanding the relations between ecosystems and world-systems over time. Alf Hornborg, J. R. McNeill, and Joan Martinez-Alier have brought together a group of the foremost writers from the social, historical, and geographical sciences to provide an overview of the ecological dimension of global, economic processes, with a long-term, historical perspective. Readers are challenged to integrate studies of the Earth-system with studies of the world-system, and to reconceptualize the relations between human beings and their environment, as well as the challenges of global sustainability.

This exciting new reader in environmental history provides a framework for understanding the relations between ecosystems and world-systems over time. Alf Hornborg, J. R. McNeill, and Joan Martinez-Alier have brought together a group of the foremost writers from the social, historical, and geographical sciences to provide an overview of the ecological dimension of global, economic processes, with a long-term, historical perspective. Readers are challenged to integrate studies of the Earth-system with studies of the world-system, and to reconceptualize the relations between human beings and their environment, as well as the challenges of global sustainability.

This accessible and readable introduction to the Sustainability Project quickly became a project upon which six authors collaborated. They brought together the accumulated knowledge of researchers from the Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI), who are versed in global environmental change, resource use, work, the economy, and sustainable development. Writing and then discussing and commenting on each other's work brought these experts closer together and made it even clearer to all of them how urgent and important the goal of sustainable development has become. The result was a definitive study of how we need to change, both collectively and individually, to ensure the sustainability of our planet.