Since 1945, the UN has been actively engaged in conceptualizing strategies for both economic development and a sustainable environment. From a broad historical perspective, Development without Destruction sketches the role played by organizations and individuals in the UN system in developing and consolidating principles of international law and international governance with respect to natural resource management. Nico Schrijver highlights the UN's efforts to generate and implement strategies to resolve tensions between economic development and environmental protection, conservation and exploitation, sovereignty and internationalism, and armed conflict and peaceful access to natural resources. Schrijver's thorough analysis is an indispensable guide to management of the critical environmental issues on today's global agenda.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.

This third edition of an enduring and popular book has been fully updated and revised, exploring the two opposing paradigms of sustainability in an insightful and accessible way. Eric Neumayer contends that central to the debate on sustainable development is the question of whether natural capital can be substituted by other forms of capital. Proponents of weak sustainability maintain that such substitutability is possible, whilst followers of strong sustainability regard natural capital as non-substitutable. The author examines the availability of natural resources for the production of consumption goods and the environmental consequences of economic growth. He identifies the critical forms of natural capital in need of preservation given risk, uncertainty and ignorance about the future and opportunity costs of preservation. He goes on to provide a critical discussion of measures of sustainability. Indicators of weak sustainability such as Genuine Savings and the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare also known as the Genuine Progress Indicator are analysed, as are indicators of strong sustainability, including ecological footprints, material flows and sustainability gaps. This book will prove essential reading for students, scholars and policymakers with an interest in ecological and environmental economics and sustainable development.

The loss of the earth's biological diversity is widely recognized as a critical environmental problem. That loss is most severe in developing countries, where the conditions of human existence are most difficult. Conserving Biodiversity presents an agenda for research that can provide information to formulate policy and design conservation programs in the Third World. The book includes discussions of research needs in the biological sciences as well as economics and anthropology, areas of critical importance to conservation and sustainable development. Although specifically directed toward development agencies, non-governmental organizations, and decisionmakers in developing nations, this volume should be of interest to all who are involved in the conservation of biological diversity.

This is an updated edition of the 1995 version. In the mid-1980's, the IUCN CEL, in consultation with leading experts from around the world, began to respond to a need later identified by Agenda 21: the preparation of an integrated framework for international environmental law.