Food, water and energy form some of the basic elements of sustainability considerations. This ground-breaking book examines and decodes these elements, exploring how a range of countries make decisions regarding their energy and bio-resource consumption and procurement. The authors consider how these choices impact not only the societies and environments of those countries, but the world in general. To achieve this, the authors review the merits of various sustainability and environmental metrics, and then apply these to 34 countries that are ranked low, medium or high on the human development index. The book assesses their resource capacities and the environmental impacts, both within and outside their country boundaries, from consuming food, water, and energy. The final section uses the lessons derived from the earlier analyses of resource consumption to explore the importance of geography, climates and sustainable management of forests and other natural resources for building resilient societies in the future.

Abstract: Food, water and energy form some of the basic elements of sustainability considerations. This ground-breaking book examines and decodes these elements, exploring how a range of countries make decisions regarding their energy and bio-resource consumption and procurement. The authors consider how these choices impact not only the societies and environments of those countries, but the world in general. 1. Sustainability - Clues for Positive Societal and Ecosystem Change2. Learning From the Past: Why Societies Collapsed or Survived3. Today: Decoding Country Resource Stories4. Fossil Energy Endowments and Externalities5. Forests - the Backbone and Circulatory System for Human Societies6. The Soil and Water Connection to Food: Adapt, Mitigate, or Die7. The Future: Climate Change as a Global Driver Impacting Sustainability8. Where the Past and Future meet: Soils or the Unseen Earth that Nurtures Societies9. The Ultimate Constraint to Human Sustainability: Solar IncomePART 2: Scientific Approach to Decoding SustainabilityPART 3: The Real Country StoriesPART 4. Climate and Soils: Unavoidable Constraints To Solar CapitalPART 5. Societies Adapt To a Quagmire of Resource ChoicesReferencesTo achieve this, the authors review the merits of various sustainability and environmental metrics, and then apply these to 34 countries that are ranked low, medium or high on the human development index. The book assesses their resource capacities and the environmental impacts, both within and outside their country boundaries, from consuming food, water, and energy. The final section uses the lessons derived from the earlier analyses of resource consumption to explore the importance of geography, climates and sustainable management of forests and other natural resources for building resilient societies in the future

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. How might literary scholarship engage with the sustainability debate? Aimed at research scholars and advanced students in literary and environmental studies, this collection brings together twelve essays by leading and up-coming scholars on the theme of literature and sustainability. In today’s sociopolitical world, sustainability has become a ubiquitous term, yet one potentially driven to near meaninglessness by the extent of its usage. While much has been written on sustainability in various domains, this volume sets out to foreground the contributions literary scholarship might make to notions of sustainability, both as an idea with a particular history and as an attempt to reconceptualise the way we live. Essays in this volume take a range of approaches, using the tools of literary analysis to interrogate sustainability’s various paradoxes and to examine how literature in its various forms might envisage notions of sustainability.

This book considers the impact of climate change on cities, advocating that people are the panaceas and antidote to mitigating climate change, by enhancing their involvement in achieving sustainable development Goals (SDGs). This leads to the development of an SDG best practice participation template, which is supported by an extensive checklist of the ‘whats’ and ‘hows’ in participatory processes. Using case studies, extensive literature reviews and meta-analysis to make a case for a people-centric and integrated approach to sustainable urban development, it examines the role of governance in climate change, focusing on decision making processes, policies and regulations, as well as focusing on the significance of a people-oriented approach on climate change and cities. Through an extensive global outlook, this book highlights bottom-up methods of implementing and achieving sustainable urban development in the age of climate change. These highlights should help to develop new mindsets, new strategies, new directions and new policies, through which we can see a more sustainable approach to urbanisation and urban development globally, which can start ‘equipping future generations with the tools for them to help their future generations’.

With the use of high-level soil management technology, Africa could feed several billion people, yet food production has generally stagnated since the 1960s. No matter how powerful the seed technology, the seedling emerging from it can flourish only in a healthy soil. Accordingly, crop yields in Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean could be doubled or tripled through adoption of technologies based on laws of sustainable soil management. Principles of Sustainable Soil Management in Agroecosystems describes the application of these laws to enhance ecosystem services while restoring degraded soils and promoting sustainable use. With chapters contributed by world-class soil scientists, ecologists, and social scientists, this book outlines critical changes in management of agricultural soils necessary to achieve food security and meet the food demands of the present and projected future population. These changes include conversion to no-till and conservation agriculture; adoption of strategies of integrated nutrient management, water harvesting, and use of drip sub-irrigation; complex cropping/farming systems such as cover cropping and agroforestry; and use of nano-enhanced fertilizers. The book is based on the premise that it is not possible to extract more from a soil than what is put into it without degrading its quality. The strategy is to replace what is removed, respond wisely to what is changed, and be pro-active to what may happen because of natural and anthropogenic perturbations. The chapters, which exemplify these ideas, cover a range of topics including organic farming, soil fertility, crop-symbiotic soil microbiota, human-driven soil degradation, soil degradation and restoration, carbon sink capacity of soils, soil renewal and sustainability, and the marginality principle.

Over the last three decades, higher education institutions have experienced massive changes. In particular, institutions of higher education have been positioned as a means to contribute to the knowledge economy and gain a level of competitive advantage in the global marketplace. Advancing Knowledge in Higher Education: Universities in Turbulent Times addresses ways in which knowledge is shaped, produced, and reworked to meet international demands for productive workforces. Divided into three sections that interrogate the higher education policy context, knowledge production, and knowledge workers, this reference publication focuses on the role of higher education in business value creation and competitive advantage, serving as a useful reference for academicians, professionals, researchers, and students.

This book gives detailed information about how soil, water and wastes can be managed to overcome the various global issues via possible nexus thinking. The emphasis is on the environmental resource perspective of global climate change-related issues. It provides stepwise information on climate change and adaption strategies, urbanization and its impact and management strategies, environmental nexus approaches to cope with global challenges and recourses conservation and ecological approaches to restore the damaged ecosystem. Features: Compiles the possible nexus approaches that contribute to managing the atmospheric environmental variables in sustainable ways Focuses on environmental resources perspective of the global change Covers how soil, water and waste may be managed in a nexus Explains modern strategies to manage the present environmental situation that are feasible and safe to the environment Discusses environmental nexus for judicious resource management This book is aimed at researchers and graduate students in environmental sciences and engineering and sustainable development.