Just Sustainabilities Bullard, Robert D; Agyeman, Julian; Evans, Bob
2003, 20120427, 2001, 2003., 2012-04-27
eBook, Book
Environmental activists and academics alike are realizing that a sustainable society must be a just one. Environmental degradation is almost always linked to questions of human equality and quality ...of life. Throughout the world, those segments of the population that have the least political power and are the most marginalized are selectively victimized by environmental crises. This book argues that social and environmental justice within and between nations should be an integral part of the policies and agreements that promote sustainable development. The book addresses the links between environmental quality and human equality and between sustainability and environmental justice.
This book provides a rigorous and practical analysis of sustainable development prospects today by applying the innovative sustainomics framework. Developed by the eminent environmental scientist ...Mohan Munasinghe, sustainomics explores the practical steps in making the transition from the risky business-as-usual scenario to a safe and sustainable future. Its main message is optimistic – although the problems are serious, an effective response can be mounted to make development more sustainable if initiated immediately. The book explains the key principles underlying sustainomics cogently, concisely and with minimum technical jargon. It illustrates the methodology with empirical case studies that are practical and policy-relevant over a wide range of time and geographic scales, countries, sectors, ecosystems and circumstances. The extensive bibliography is useful to researchers of specific issues within sustainable development. This book appeals to a wide audience, including students, researchers from many disciplines, policy analysts, public and private-sector decision makers, and development practitioners.
The Mediterranean coastal regions of Southern Europe have long been world leaders in mass tourism. This book examines some key questions for tourism development in these areas, with implications for ...similar regions across the world. The standardised forms of mass tourism are diversifying – with more specialised forms, notably those based on nature, culture and heritage, and those catering for special interests. There is a growing spectrum of modes of tourism, with an emphasis on variety, flexibility and permeability. Both mass tourism and the more diversified forms substantially impact on sustainable development. Policies promoting sustainable development are often of two main types: developing smaller-scale, alternative tourism products that are intended to be less damaging to the environment and society, and secondly, attempts to make mass tourism coastal resorts more sustainable. But there has been little critical assessment of these policies, either evaluating their basic assumptions or their successes and failures in practice. This edited book critically examines these issues for varied coastal regions in Southern Europe, including case studies from Spain, Croatia, Turkey, and north and south Cyprus.
Eve E. Buckley's study of twentieth-century Brazil examines the nation's hard social realities through the history of science, focusing on the use of technology and engineering as vexed instruments ...of reform and economic development. Nowhere was the tension between technocratic optimism and entrenched inequality more evident than in the drought-ridden Northeastsertao, plagued by chronic poverty, recurrent famine, and mass migrations. Buckley reveals how the physicians, engineers, agronomists, and mid-level technocrats working for federal agencies to combat drought were pressured by politicians to seek out a technological magic bullet that would both end poverty and obviate the need for land redistribution to redress long-standing injustices.Scientists planned and oversaw huge projects including dam construction, irrigation for small farmers, and public health initiatives. They were, Buckley shows, sincerely determined to solve the drought crisis and improve the lot of poor people in thesertao. Over time, however, they came to the frustrating realization that, despite technology's tantalizing promise of an apolitical means to end poverty, political collisions among competing stakeholders were inevitable. Buckley's revelations about technocratic hubris, the unexpected consequences of environmental engineering, and constraints on scientists as agents of social change resonate with today's hopes that science and technology can solve society's most pressing dilemmas, including climate change.
This book presents an in-depth and deeply engaged conversation among interfaith religious leaders and interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners in pursuit of an ethical consensus that could ground ...sustainable development efforts.
Sustainable development in global border regions Cheng, Yi; Xu, Zhenci; Liu, Haimeng
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
06/2024, Volume:
384, Issue:
6702
Journal Article
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book presents methods to evaluate sustainable development using economic tools. The focus on sustainable development takes the reader beyond ...economic growth to encompass inclusion, environmental stewardship and good governance. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework for outcomes. In illustrating the SDGs, the book employs three evaluation approaches: impact evaluation, cost-benefit analysis and objectives-based evaluation. The innovation lies in connecting evaluation tools with economics. Inclusion, environmental care and good governance, thought of as “wicked problems”, are given centre stage. The book uses case studies to show the application of evaluation tools. It offers guidance to evaluation practitioners, students of development and policymakers. The basic message is that evaluation comes to life when its links with socio-economic, environmental, and governance policies are capitalized on.
China has responded to a national land-system sustainability emergency via an integrated portfolio of large-scale programmes. Here we review 16 sustainability programmes, which invested US$378.5 ...billion (in 2015 US$), covered 623.9 million hectares of land and involved over 500 million people, mostly since 1998. We find overwhelmingly that the interventions improved the sustainability of China's rural land systems, but the impacts are nuanced and adverse outcomes have occurred. We identify some key characteristics of programme success, potential risks to their durability, and future research needs. We suggest directions for China and other nations as they progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations' Agenda 2030.
Blue Skies over Beijing Kahn, Matthew E; Zheng, Siqi
2016, 2016., 20160517, 2016-05-17
eBook
Over the last thirty years, even as China's economy has grown by leaps and bounds, the environmental quality of its urban centers has precipitously declined due to heavy industrial output and coal ...consumption. The country is currently the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitter and several of the most polluted cities in the world are in China. Yet, millions of people continue moving to its cities seeking opportunities. Blue Skies over Beijing investigates the ways that China's urban development impacts local and global environmental challenges. Focusing on day-to-day choices made by the nation's citizens, families, and government, Matthew Kahn and Siqi Zheng examine how Chinese urbanites are increasingly demanding cleaner living conditions and consider where China might be headed in terms of sustainable urban growth.
Kahn and Zheng delve into life in China's cities from the personal perspectives of the rich, middle class, and poor, and how they cope with the stresses of pollution. Urban parents in China have a strong desire to protect their children from environmental risk, and calls for a better quality of life from the rising middle class places pressure on government officials to support greener policies. Using the historical evolution of American cities as a comparison, the authors predict that as China's economy moves away from heavy manufacturing toward cleaner sectors, many of China's cities should experience environmental progress in upcoming decades.
Looking at pressing economic and environmental issues in urban China, Blue Skies over Beijing shows that a cleaner China will mean more social stability for the nation and the world.
•We investigate the interlinkages between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicators.•We further identify the community of interlinked SDG indicators to be benchmarked and prioritized for ...different regions.•Employing network analysis on IAEG-SDG data, we find that trade-offs tend to be weaker than the synergies.•Analysis for different regions suggests that universal benchmarking of SDGs is counterproductive.•We argue that it is useful to identify and use a community of indicators to prioritize certain SDGs in different regions.
Universal, ambitious, and arguably ambiguous, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are difficult to measure, monitor, prioritize and achieve. They are a multi-dimensional construct of economic, social and environmental indicators that work through complex interlinkages. We investigate these interlinkages at the SDG target level to identify the trade-offs and synergies between the SDGs. Second, we identify the community of interlinked SDG targets to determine if the SDGs can be benchmarked and prioritized for different regions. Employing network analysis approach the analysis is based on the IAEG-SDG data for the period 2000–2017. We find several positive and negative interlinkages (reinforcing and balancing feedbacks) between the SDG targets. The trade-offs, however, are much weaker than the synergies. Analyzing network structures for different regions, our results suggest that universal benchmarking of SDGs is counterproductive. We argue that it may be useful to identify a specific community of SDG targets, and use them as a guide to prioritize certain goals in different regions.
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