Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Development - Sustainable Development

Once considered the antithesis of a verdant and vibrant ecosystem, cities are now being hailed as highly efficient and complex social ecological systems. Emerging from the streets of the post-industrial city are well-tended community gardens, rooftop farms and other viable habitats capable of supporting native flora and fauna. At the forefront of this transformation are the citizens living in the cities themselves. As people around the world increasingly relocate to urban areas, this book discusses how they engage in urban stewardship and what civic participation in the environment means...

The discovery, just forty years ago, of vast oil and gas reserves in the Southwestern part of Norway, and more recently in the Arctic High North region, created an economic titan and posed a vast array of challenges for both the Norwegian government and the residents of this area. How to extract and transport all that oil and gas without despoiling the pristine environment? How to use this wealth in a socially responsible and sustainable way? How to prepare the rural High North citizens-traditionally fishermen and farmers-for a global, high-tech economy?

Adopting an original...

Cities are home to the most consequential current attempts at human adaptation and they provide one possible focus for the flourishing of life on this planet. However, for this to be realized in more than an ad hoc way, a substantial rethinking of current approaches and practices needs to occur.

Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice responds to the crises of sustainability in the world today by going back to basics. It makes four major contributions to thinking about and acting upon cities. It provides a means of reflexivity learning about urban sustainability...

Cities are home to the most consequential current attempts at human adaptation and they provide one possible focus for the flourishing of life on this planet. However, for this to be realized in more than an ad hoc way, a substantial rethinking of current approaches and practices needs to occur.

Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice responds to the crises of sustainability in the world today by going back to basics. It makes four major contributions to thinking about and acting upon cities. It provides a means of reflexivity learning about urban sustainability...

Projecting win-win situations, new economic opportunities, green growth and innovative partnerships, the green economy discourse has quickly gained centre stage in international environmental governance and policymaking. Its underlying message is attractive and optimistic: if the market can become the tool for tackling climate change and other major ecological crises, the fight against these crises can also be the royal road to solving the problems of the market. But how 'green' is the green economy? And how social or democratic can it be?

This book examines how the...

This book examines the arguments made by political actors in the creation of antagonistic discourses on climate change. Using in-depth empirical research from Sweden, a country considered by the international political community to be a frontrunner in tackling climate change, it draws out lessons that contribute to the worldwide environmental debate.

The book identifies and analyses four globally circulated discourses that call for very different action to be taken to achieve sustainability: Industrial fatalism, Green Keynesianism, Eco-socialism and Climate scepticism....

This book explores the gendered dimensions of recent land governance transformations across the globe in the wake of unprecedented pressures on land and natural resources. These complex contemporary forces are reconfiguring livelihoods and impacting women's positions, their tenure security and well-being, and that of their families.

Bringing together fourteen empirical community case studies from around the world, the book examines governance transformations of land and land-based resources resulting from four major processes of tenure change: commercial land based investments, the...

Environmental certification is an effective tool for managing the environmental impact of companies, leveraging their competitive capabilities and ensuring their compliance with environmental principles. A growing number of countries across the world are adopting this practice and the growth of new environmental standards - with different scopes, aims and roles - calls for a clear and updated systematization of the issue.

This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the different environmental certification tools. As well as examining practical methods of implementing...

Climate change poses multiple challenges to development. It affects lives and livelihoods, infrastructure and institutions, as well as beliefs, cultures and identities. There is a growing recognition that the social dimensions of vulnerability and adaptation now need to move to the forefront of development policies and practices.

This book presents case studies showing that climate change is as much a problem of development as for development, with many of the risks closely linked to past, present and future development pathways. Development policies and practices can...

Climate change poses multiple challenges to development. It affects lives and livelihoods, infrastructure and institutions, as well as beliefs, cultures and identities. There is a growing recognition that the social dimensions of vulnerability and adaptation now need to move to the forefront of development policies and practices.

This book presents case studies showing that climate change is as much a problem of development as for development, with many of the risks closely linked to past, present and future development pathways. Development policies and practices can...

When it comes to climate change, the greatest difficulty we face is that we do not know the likely degree of change or its cost, which means that environmental policy decisions have to be made under uncertainty. This book offers an accessible philosophical treatment of the broad range of ethical and policy challenges posed by climate change uncertainty.

Drawing on both the philosophy of science and ethics, Martin Bunzl shows how tackling climate change revolves around weighing up our interests now against those of future generations, which requires that we examine our assumptions...

When it comes to climate change, the greatest difficulty we face is that we do not know the likely degree of change or its cost, which means that environmental policy decisions have to be made under uncertainty. This book offers an accessible philosophical treatment of the broad range of ethical and policy challenges posed by climate change uncertainty.

Drawing on both the philosophy of science and ethics, Martin Bunzl shows how tackling climate change revolves around weighing up our interests now against those of future generations, which requires that we examine our assumptions...

Multilateral negotiations on worldwide challenges have grown in importance with rising global interdependence. Yet, they have recently proven slow to address these challenges successfully. This book discusses the questions which have arisen from the highly varying results of recent multilateral attempts to reach cooperation on some of the critical global challenges of our times. These include the long-awaited UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, which ended without official agreement in 2009; Cancun one year later, attaining at least moderate tangible results; the first salient trade...