Over the last quarter of a century, Asia Pacific as a region has enjoyed rapid economic growth, which has dramatically reduced the number of poor people and improved human development. While the region is less poor, there is social and economic inequality between subregions, between countries and within countries, between the rural areas and cities and within the cities where over 1.6 billion people now live. The rapid economic growth has also come at the expense of environmental degradation. And to compound this, climate change is expected to magnify existing vulnerabilities throughout the region. This report analyzes emerging and persistent development and environmental challenges in the region. It also traces the patterns of economic development and resource use and degradation since 1992 when leaders from countries around the globe made their commitment to sustainable development at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Asia and Pacific region is home to the world’s largest concentration of coral reefs and mangroves. It accommodates two-thirds of the world’s human population and its economic activities have the highest growth rate in the world. This book gives an overview of the state-of-the-art understanding on the drivers, state, and responses to the coastal environmental changes in the Asia and Pacific region. It provides important perspectives on the subject for researchers.

Published to coincide with the Fourth United Nations Environmental Assembly, UN Environment's sixth Global Environment Outlook calls on decision makers to take bold and urgent action to address pressing environmental issues in order to protect the planet and human health. By bringing together hundreds of scientists, peer reviewers and collaborating institutions and partners, the GEO reports build on sound scientific knowledge to provide governments, local authorities, businesses and individual citizens with the information needed to guide societies to a truly sustainable world by 2050. GEO-6 outlines the current state of the environment, illustrates possible future environmental trends and analyses the effectiveness of policies. This flagship report shows how governments can put us on the path to a truly sustainable future - emphasising that urgent and inclusive action is needed to achieve a healthy planet with healthy people. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Annotation As the twenty-first century commences, the countries of Pacific Asia are grappling with the impact of regional development, industry, and growth on their increasingly acute environmental problems. International Environmental Cooperation: Politics and Diplomacy in Pacific Asia brings together innovative and insightful studies of international environmental politics in this increasingly critical part of the world. The first section of the book examines many of the issues and actors impacting international environmental cooperation, highlighting important themes such as cooperation between developed and developing countries, international justice, and regional environmental security. This section also illustrates key features of specific multilateral environmental agreements and the competing interests of important national bodies, international organizations, multinational corporations, and nongovernmental entities. The second section focuses on environmental diplomacy and regime-building in Pacific Asia, examining issues such as acid rain, nuclear waste, deforestation, and conflict over regional seas. Contributors from Asia, Europe, and North America bring an international perspective to questions of environmental cooperation. International Environmental Cooperation provides policymakers, citizens, scholars and students with essential information for understanding and addressing some of the world's most significant environmental problems.

In the present global context, some countries still face many challenges to bringing about inclusive, efficient, and environmentally sustainable development. Simultaneously, the stakes of survival are rising, as climate change exacerbates both environmental and social ills. Asia as a region is particularly vulnerable, as it is densely populated and includes both developed and developing countries. The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Development in Asia seeks to examine these issues in depth. Presenting a comprehensive literature review, as well as numerous case studies, this book examines sustainable development from economic and social perspectives, as well as from an environmental viewpoint. Divided into seven parts, the topics addressed include: Environmental challenges Energy dependence and transition Economic justice Social welfare Sustainable governance Providing comprehensive coverage of a wide variety of countries in the region, this handbook will be useful for students and scholars of sustainable development, environment and society, and Asian Studies in general.

Talk of the human-enhanced greenhouse effect and the ways in which it may affect our lives has made many people more aware of environmental change. We have come to realize that the environment is and has always bean in a state of continuous change, and that we and other organisms have had to adjust our lifestyles accordingly. This book focuses on the Pacific Basin, a vast region which can be considered a microcosm of the entire surface of the Earth and which has suffered from being marginalized in most accounts of Earth-surface processes and phenomena. In this book, the Pacific Basin includes the Pacific Ocean and Islands and also the Pacific Rim which is divided into the subregions of Antarctica, South America, Central America, North America, Beringia, East Asia and Australasia. Professor Nunn begins by outlining the distant origins of the modern Pacific Basin more than 1000 million years ago, then traces its development through the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic into the Cenozoic Era. For this time the last 66 million years - the history of environmental change becomes progressively better known. For the last 1.8 million years (the Quaternary period), the Earth s climate has oscillated between warm and cool, producing synchronous environmental changes throughout most of the Pacific Basin. The importance of volcanism and tectonics (land-level movements) for which the Pacific Basin is well known as causes of environmental change is explained in detail. The effects of human activities on most Pacific Basin environments began to be registered only during the Holocene the last 12 000 years culminating in the environmental crisis which currently afflicts many parts of this region. While the role of humans in altering Pacific Basin environments is discussed in detail, considerable attention is also given to the ways in which environmental change caused changes to human lifestyles which had far-reaching consequences.