Virtually all national cases of rapid, widespread progress from poverty to wealth have been causally associated with the transformation of agricultural systems. From eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and North America to late twentieth-century East Asia, striking increases in agricultural productivity, improvements in food safety, and the markedly reduced costs of food distribution have dramatically bettered the quantity, quality, and variety of food available at lower prices. Around the globe, these agricultural advances have permitted unprecedented growth in incomes, life...

Incredibly, close to one-quarter of humanity lives without electricity or other modern forms of energy, while as many as one-third of the world s population relies (at least in part) on traditional biofuels, such as cow dung or firewood, at great cost to its health, security, and economic welfare. Although these stark facts have only recently been fully acknowledged, energy deprivation is a major obstacle to development efforts around the world, especially though not exclusively in the Bottom Billion economies of sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia. Indeed, sustainable development...

If as many environmental experts maintain global climate change is the greatest challenge of our times, the need for a serious, and universal, commitment to low-carbon development is more urgent than ever. Low-carbon development might be described as climate-friendly growth that enables humanity to flourish fairly and equitably within the ecological limits of our planet, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, scholarly work on the topic is booming in research centres around the world. Now, this new Routledge collection enables users to make sense of the most important academic thinking to date.

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