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.
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.
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.
•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.
This book draws attention to political aspects of sustainable development goal-setting, exploring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the global-national nexus during their first five years. ...After broad global deliberation and political negotiations, the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs were adopted in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 2015, and by now many countries have political structures in place for working towards their realisation. This book explores three concepts to call attention to the political qualities of processes related to the SDGs: legitimacy, responsibility, and accountability. Legitimacy is required to obtain broad political ownership for policy goals in order for them to become effective in addressing cross-border sustainability challenges. Responsibility needs to be clearly distributed among political institutions if a long-term set of broad goals such as the SDGs are to be realised. Accountability to the public is the retrospective mirror of political responsibility. The Politics of the Sustainable Development Goals contributes new knowledge on political processes at the nexus of global and national levels, focussing on three countries at different levels of socio-economic development and democratisation: namely Ghana, Tanzania, and Sweden. These countries illustrate a variety of challenges related to the realisation of the SDGs. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable development, international organisations, and global politics.
This book discusses how citizens can participate more effectively in sustainability science and environmental policy debates. It discusses designs for participatory procedures, and experiences of ...their application to issues of global change. While the focus is on citizen participation, the involvement of specific stakeholders - including water managers and venture capitalists - is also addressed. The book describes how focus group methods were combined with the interactive use of computer models into new forms of participation, tested with six hundred citizens. The results are discussed in relation to other important topics, including greenhouse gas and water management. By combining this with an examination of issues of interactive governance and developing country participation, the book provides state-of-the-art, practical insights for students, researchers and policy makers alike.
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and its progressively wider impact on many sectors requires an assessment of its effect on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Using a ...consensus-based expert elicitation process, we find that AI can enable the accomplishment of 134 targets across all the goals, but it may also inhibit 59 targets. However, current research foci overlook important aspects. The fast development of AI needs to be supported by the necessary regulatory insight and oversight for AI-based technologies to enable sustainable development. Failure to do so could result in gaps in transparency, safety, and ethical standards.
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