Download or read book Environmental Policy and the Pursuit of Sustainability written by Chelsea Schelly and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-23 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is increasingly apparent that human activities are not suitable for sustaining a healthy global environment. From energy development to resource extraction to use of land and water, humans are having a devastating effect on the earth’s ability to sustain human societies and quality lives. Many approaches to changing the negative environmental consequences of human activities focus on one of two options, emphasizing either technological fixes or individual behavior change to reduce environmental harms through sustainable consumption habits. This book takes a different approach, focusing on the role of environmental policy in shaping the possibilities for and creating hindrances to pursuing more sustainable use of environmental resources. This unique compilation examines environmental policy through empirical case studies, demonstrating through each particular example how environmental policies are formed, how they operate, what they do in terms of shaping behaviors and future trajectories, and how they intersect with other social dynamics such as politics, power, social norms, and social organization. By providing case studies from both the United States and Mexico, this book provides a cross-national perspective on current environmental policies and their role in creating and limiting sustainable human futures. Organized around four key parts – Water; Land; Health and Wellbeing; and Resilience – and with a central theme of environmental justice and equity, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental policy and sustainability.

Download or read book Pursuing Sustainability written by Pamela Matson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential guide to sustainable development for students and practitioners Sustainability is a global imperative and a scientific challenge like no other. This concise guide provides students and practitioners with a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action in the pursuit of sustainable development, and serves as an invaluable companion to more narrowly focused courses dealing with sustainability in particular sectors such as energy, food, water, and housing, or in particular regions of the world. Written by leading experts, Pursuing Sustainability shows how more inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives can help you achieve your sustainability objectives. It stresses the need for understanding how capital assets are linked to sustainability goals through the complex adaptive dynamics of social-environmental systems, how committed people can use governance processes to alter those dynamics, and how successful interventions can be shaped through collaborations among researchers and practitioners on the ground. The ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate students and an invaluable resource for anyone working in this fast-growing field, Pursuing Sustainability also features case studies, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading. Provides a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action Draws on the latest cutting-edge science and practices Serves as the ideal companion text to more narrowly focused courses Utilizes interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives Illustrates concepts with a core set of case studies used throughout the book Written by world authorities on sustainability An online illustration package is available to professors

Download or read book Energy written by Robert Bent and published by . This book was released on 2002-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why plant trees that only provide shade when they could yield fruit as well? Why not take advantage of sunny patches at the outskirts of parking lots to grow carrots and strawberries, free for the harvesting? The idea that public land could be used creatively to grow fresh food for local citizens was beginning to gain traction when Public Produce was first published in 2009, but there were few concrete examples of action. Today, things are different: fruits and vegetables are thriving in parks, plazas, along our streets, and around our civic buildings. This revised edition profiles numerous communities and community officials that are rethinking the role of public space in cities, and how our most revered urban gathering spots might nourish both body and soul. Taking readers from inspiration to implementation, Public Produce is chock full of tantalizing images and hearty lessons for bringing agriculture back into our cities.

Download or read book Greening Environmental Policy written by Frank Fischer and published by SAGE Publications Limited. This book was released on 1995-06-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sustainable development has become the primary focus of national and international environmental policy. Designed as a common global strategy for industrial and industrializing countries, some see it as offering environmental protection without sacrificing economic growth. But sustainability has become a hotly contested concept. As its critics point out, sustainable development seeks to achieve environmental protection without confronting the tough choices facing modern corporate-industrial society and its consumption-driven way of life. To what degree is the existing system itself responsible for the environmental crisis? Can we achieve a sustainable future merely by tagging environmental requirements onto the existing industrial order? Or must we address the political-economic system itself? Broadly committed to the goals and values of a green political perspective, the chapters in this book show the environmental crisis to be essentially a political-economic crisis. The pursuit of sustainability cannot proceed without significant changes in our economic enterprises, public institutions and personal lives. Reaching beyond the contradictions of sustainable development, the authors explore the kinds of political arrangements needed to throw open sustainability to wide-ranging debate, both national and international. They advance alternative environmental policy-making processes designed to forge a genuine political consensus around these questions, as well as institutional, cultural and behavioural strategies capable of translating it into effective policy solutions. Fundamental to these strategies, a progressive commitment to participatory democracy is seen to provide the surest footing for both the articulation and realization of a sustainable future.

Download or read book The Sustainability Handbook written by William R. Blackburn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-23 with total page 823 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sustainability Handbook covers all the challenges, complexities and benefits of sustainability for businesses, governments and other organizations. It provides a blueprint for how organizations can reach or exceed economic, social and environmental excellence. It offers a host of practical approaches and tools including a model sustainability policy for organizations, summaries of sustainability codes and tips on selecting them, an extensive collection of metrics and a wealth of supplementary reference material. This is the essential reference for every organization in pursuit of sustainability.

Download or read book Struggles and Successes in the Pursuit of Sustainable Development written by Tay Keong Tan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-03 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The challenges associated with the struggles for attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and objectives are as diverse and complex as the variety of human societies, national conditions and natural ecosystems worldwide. Despite decades of economic growth and technological advances, our world is plagued by poverty, hunger, disease, conflicts and inequality, and many societies are under the strain of environmental changes and governance failure. Such global-scale challenges call for the SDGs to be translated beyond bold concepts and aspirational targets into concrete programs and feasible plans that are substantively valuable, locally acceptable, pragmatic and operationally implementable. In the pursuit of the SDGs, positive results are far from guaranteed. Success is uncertain. Instead, the path forward requires difficult learning, experimentation and adaptation by multiple stakeholders. Loss and sacrifice are foreseeable and often inevitable. This important book captures the lessons from ongoing struggles and the early successes. Productive failures and emerging practices are identified, analyzed and promulgated for interdisciplinary learning by, and for the inspiration of, like-minded individuals, organizations, communities and nations worldwide. They can also inform and enrich the curricula in universities, training institutions and schools to prepare future generations of citizens, leaders and activists with the ethos and values of sustainability and social responsibility. The book offers a platform for academics, practitioners and concerned global citizens to identify pathways forward on the immense challenges of sustainability.

Download or read book Sustainability and the U S EPA written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-10-08 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sustainability is based on a simple and long-recognized factual premise: Everything that humans require for their survival and well-being depends, directly or indirectly, on the natural environment. The environment provides the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Recognizing the importance of sustainability to its work, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been working to create programs and applications in a variety of areas to better incorporate sustainability into decision-making at the agency. To further strengthen the scientific basis for sustainability as it applies to human health and environmental protection, the EPA asked the National Research Council (NRC) to provide a framework for incorporating sustainability into the EPA's principles and decision-making. This framework, Sustainability and the U.S. EPA, provides recommendations for a sustainability approach that both incorporates and goes beyond an approach based on assessing and managing the risks posed by pollutants that has largely shaped environmental policy since the 1980s. Although risk-based methods have led to many successes and remain important tools, the report concludes that they are not adequate to address many of the complex problems that put current and future generations at risk, such as depletion of natural resources, climate change, and loss of biodiversity. Moreover, sophisticated tools are increasingly available to address cross-cutting, complex, and challenging issues that go beyond risk management. The report recommends that EPA formally adopt as its sustainability paradigm the widely used "three pillars" approach, which means considering the environmental, social, and economic impacts of an action or decision. Health should be expressly included in the "social" pillar. EPA should also articulate its vision for sustainability and develop a set of sustainability principles that would underlie all agency policies and programs.

Download or read book Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously second edition written by Kent E. Portney and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theoretically driven comparison of sustainability programs in American cities, updated with the latest research and additional case studies. Today most major cities have undertaken some form of sustainability initiative. Yet there have been few systematic comparisons across cities, or theoretically grounded considerations of what works and what does not, and why. In Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously, Kent Portney addresses this gap, offering a comprehensive overview and analysis of sustainability programs and policies in American cities. After discussing the conceptual underpinnings of sustainability, he examines the local aspects of sustainability; considers the measurement of sustainability and offers an index of “serious” sustainability for the fifty-five largest cities in the country; examines the relationship between sustainability and economic growth; and discusses issues of governance, equity, and implementation. He also offers extensive case studies, with separate chapters on large, medium-size, and small cities, and provides an empirically grounded analysis of why some large cities are more ambitious than others in their sustainability efforts. This second edition has been updated throughout, with new material that draws on the latest research. It also offers numerous additional case studies, a new chapter on management and implementation issues, and a greatly expanded comparative analysis of big-city sustainability initiatives. Portney shows how cities use the broad rubric of sustainability to achieve particular political ends, and he dispels the notion that only cities that are politically liberal are interested in sustainability. Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously draws a roadmap for effective sustainability initiatives.

Download or read book Environment and Sustainability written by Professor Stephen Dovers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dovers and Hussey argue that better public policy is the key to creating a more sustainable environment and show what this might involve. This is an intensely practical book, intellectually rigorous, and written in a concise and accessible style. They meld a deep knowledge of traditional public policy with a close understanding of sustainability problems and an appreciation of the complex institutional systems which make up modern civil society. As well as establishing an operational framework for policy analysis and prescription, they provide ways of fulfilling key elements of an effective policy process with chapters on: Problem framing Policy framing Policy implementation Policy monitoring and evaluation Public participation Institutional settings and reform for effective policy. This edition responds to the increasing urgency and complexity of challenges of environment and sustainability. It is updated to include new perspectives from policy theory and practice, expands the coverage of international dimensions of trade and regulation and incorporates coverage of emerging issues and policy challenges such as climate mitigation and adaptation, urban sustainability, and the nexus between climate change, energy and water.

Download or read book Sustainability written by Leslie Paul Thiele and published by Polity. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pursuit of sustainability has generated lifestyle changes for individuals across the globe, widespread initiatives within civil society and business, historic policies for municipal, regional, and national governments, and crucial protocols and agreements by international organizations. Increasingly, sustainability provides a common language and goal for diverse peoples and nations. Yet the meaning of sustainability remains unsettled, and the term frequently serves as a PR strategy--a green veneer for business as usual--rather than a driver of fundamental change. Leslie Paul Thiele's accessible yet thorough book provides a broad-ranging introduction to the concept and practice of sustainability today. It addresses the history, scope, and contested meanings of sustainability as an ethical ideal, an ascendant ideology, and a common sense approach to living in an ever more crowded world of increasingly scarce resources. Key topics covered include environmental health and ecological resilience, the promise and unintended consequences of technology, political and legal challenges, economic limits and opportunities, and cultural change. Unlike most other approaches to this crucial topic, Thiele argues that sustainability requires innovation and adaptation as much as the conservation of resources. His book will be a valuable resource for students in a broad range of courses, including environmental studies and related areas, as well as general readers keen to grapple with one of the most pressing issues of our times.

Download or read book Pursuing Sustainability written by Pamela Matson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential guide to sustainable development for students and practitioners Sustainability is a global imperative and a scientific challenge like no other. This concise guide provides students and practitioners with a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action in the pursuit of sustainable development, and serves as an invaluable companion to more narrowly focused courses dealing with sustainability in particular sectors such as energy, food, water, and housing, or in particular regions of the world. Written by leading experts, Pursuing Sustainability shows how more inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives can help you achieve your sustainability objectives. It stresses the need for understanding how capital assets are linked to sustainability goals through the complex adaptive dynamics of social-environmental systems, how committed people can use governance processes to alter those dynamics, and how successful interventions can be shaped through collaborations among researchers and practitioners on the ground. The ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate students and an invaluable resource for anyone working in this fast-growing field, Pursuing Sustainability also features case studies, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading. Provides a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action Draws on the latest cutting-edge science and practices Serves as the ideal companion text to more narrowly focused courses Utilizes interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives Illustrates concepts with a core set of case studies used throughout the book Written by world authorities on sustainability An online illustration package is available to professors

Download or read book Sustainability Assessment written by Bob Gibson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sustainability assessment is now emerging as a more transparent, comprehensive, integrated and far-sighted approach to decision making. Its basic demand is that all significant undertakings must make a positive contribution to sustainability. To apply this test, decision makers need criteria based on the core requirements of sustainability and the particularities of the context. As well, they need appropriately designed public processes; guidance on the weighing of alternatives, trade-offs and compromises; a supportive policy framework; suitable tools and inspiring examples. Drawing from transdisciplinary theory and practical case experience, the book addresses these matters and many of the surrounding controversies. While sustainability assessment must always be adjusted to particular circumstances, the generic approach set out in this book is applicable virtually anywhere.

Download or read book Understanding Environmental Policy written by Steven Cohen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of this pragmatic course text emphasized the policy value of a "big picture" approach to the ethical, political, technological, scientific, economic, and management aspects of environmental issues. The text then applied this approach to real-world case examples involving leaks in underground storage tanks, toxic waste cleanup, and the effects of global climate change. This second edition demonstrates the ongoing effectiveness of the book's framework in generating meaningful action and policy solutions to current environmental issues. The text adds case examples concerning congestion taxes, e-waste, hydrofracking, and recent developments in global climate change, updating references and other materials throughout and incorporating the political and policy changes of the Obama administration's first term and developments in national and global environmental issues.

Download or read book In Pursuit of Sustainable Development written by Susan Baker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-04-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book explores how implementation strategies engage sub-national, regional and local actors in the promotion of sustainable development. Following the obligations incurred at the Rio Earth Summit and the related UNCED process, European states began to produce sustainable development strategies in the 1990s. Implementation efforts are increasingly using ‘new’ governance arrangements, including: use of public/private partnerships new policy tools policy transfer and benchmarking policy networks and involvement of stakeholder groups and institutional capacity enhancement. The editors, whom are leading experts on the subject, explore the nature, extent and characteristics of the new governance arrangements that have been put in place to implement sustainable development strategies and initiatives at the sub-national levels. They also examine the approaches that sub-national governments adopted towards the mobilization of ‘stakeholders’ in these initiatives and what type of non-governmental actors have become involved. In Pursuit of Sustainable Development will be of interest to students and researchers of politics, development, geography, planning and social policy.

Download or read book Exploring Sustainable Consumption written by Maurie J. Cohen and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2001-09 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consumerism is increasingly recognized as a major drain on global resources and the search for sustainable consumption is emerging as a key policy issue. This text locates the problem within a specific history and recruits specialist opinions from a variety of disciplines.

Download or read book Green Japan written by Carin Holroyd and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Green Japan critically examines the Japanese effort to combine economic growth with commitments to environmental sustainability.

Download or read book Environmental Policy and Household Behaviour written by Patrik Soderholm and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our behaviour in our own homes - our recycling habits, consumer choices and transport preferences - all have a huge impact on the environment locally and globally. Governments across the world are trying to formulate and implement policies to encourage and enforce more sustainable household actions. Yet so often these policies fail to have the desired effects because of a lack of understanding of the complex interplay of policy and individual behaviour. This book examines this interplay, looking at the role of values, attitudes and constraints in the links between policy and changing behaviour at the household level. The first part of the book explores the theoretical background looking at the politics of lifestyles and lifestyle change, policy legitimacy and barriers and facilitators for pro-environmental behaviour. The second part is made up of in-depth case studies from Sweden - one of the fore-running countries in this area - examining three main types of household behaviour: waste and recycling; consumption and labelling; and transportation choices. Within these case studies, the contributors examine what policy initiatives have and haven't worked and the role of values and constraints in those processes. This is the first inter-disciplinary, in-depth look at how environmental policy enters the private, domestic sphere. The theoretical insights and policy guidance the book offers will be vital in the drive to generate behaviour change at the household level and the move towards sustainable societies.