Product Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, published by Soil & Water Conservation Society on May 1, 1993. The length of the article is 657 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: The Soil and Water Conservation Society can help ameliorate the decision making process employed in promoting sustainable development. With its interdisciplinary and systematized approach to solving policy problems, it can educate its members, decisionmakers and the public about the proper use of the natural resources and at same time, promote economic stability. The organization deems it necessary that important decisions on environmental management promote sustainability.

Citation Details
Title: Improved decisionmaking for sustainability. (SWCS View)
Author: Ron Hicks
Publication: Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (Refereed)
Date: May 1, 1993
Publisher: Soil & Water Conservation Society
Volume: v48Issue: n3Page: p157(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is a journal article from Resources, Conservation & Recycling, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The economic perspective of sustainability focuses on the trade off of current consumption for future consumption. This was the question that faced the economists of the late 19th century such as Malthus who noticed growth in the population outpaced that of food. Yet, Malthusian prediction of famine and disaster did not come to pass due to technological innovation. There was a substitution of created capital (machines) for natural capital (labor and land). Thus, whether created- and natural capital are substitute or complementary goods is key to sustainability. Many economists believe we can maintain current consumption and that technological innovation will take care of the needs of future generations. However other economists believe that created capital and natural capital are complementary goods; as we consume more created capital, we will also have to consume more natural capital. The relationship between natural and created capital has an impact on what policies and incentives we consider for the preservation of opportunities for future generations. If they are substitutes, current efforts need to focus on development of new technologies which will allow us to do more with less. If they are complements we need to consider efforts of preservation and conservation. We understand that we cannot have our cake and eat it too. The debate is whether we emphasize finding a new way to bake more cake, or carefully consume the cake we have. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is a journal article from Biological Conservation, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
When long-term, intense levels of harvest nearly extirpated Chinese ginseng (Panax ginseng C. Meyer) in the early 18th century, commercial harvest of American ginseng (P. quinquefolius L.) began and large quantities of the roots were exported to East Asia. Annual export figures have fallen over the past 200 years, but demand for wild American ginseng has not abated. Persistent harvest of long-lived, slow-maturing species can have negative impacts on population growth rates, yet those closest to wild resources are often in a position to be the best stewards of that resource. This study explored the consequences of different harvester behaviors on the population dynamics of American ginseng. Drawing on known behaviors, we developed three harvester 'types' and ran demographic simulations on wild ginseng populations, partitioning the sources of differences in population growth rates using a life table response experiment (LTRE). The simulations showed that ignoring size class limits and harvest season onset dates dramatically affected population growth rates. Existing laws in many states are not adequate to protect wild ginseng populations. A stewardship-oriented harvester, who delays harvest onset by two weeks, self-limits harvest intensity and plants ginseng seeds at the time of harvest can reverse declining population growth rates. ... Read more

Product Description
421 pages ... Read more

Product Description
Appropriate "green" technologies are sometimes regarded as a second-rate solution but "Hands On Technology" challenges this concept by presenting real-life examples of successful appropriate technology stories from around the world. This video package allows students to explore issues behind the production of goods from around the world. ... Read more

Product Description
Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a sustainable way for our children. This discipline addresses current issues such as climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, starvation, obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control and biodiversity depletion. Novel solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge from agronomy, soil science, molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, economy, philosophy and social sciences. As actual society issues are now intertwined, sustainable agriculture will bring solutions to build a safer world. This book series analyzes current agricultural issues, and proposes alternative solutions, consequently helping all scientists, decision-makers, professors, farmers and politicians wishing to build safe agriculture, energy and food systems for future generations. ... Read more

Product Description
This book includes a broad spectrum of perspectives from different scientific disciplines (both the natural and social sciences) as well as practical knowledge. It gives a new insight into the Carpathian mountain region. ... Read more

Product Description

Prepared by World Resources Institute Tightening global timber supplies and rising concerns over the loss of natural forests are fueling investment worldwide in plantation forestry. Plantations, which produce relatively standardized wood fiber, offer a variety of advantages. Typically, they are more predictable, reliable, and malleable than natural forests and promise faster financial returns. The Southern Hemisphere, with its relatively favorable growing conditions and labor and lands costs, has emerged as a center of plantation fiber production. Some of the most impressive plantation forestry is taking place in Brazil, under the management of that country's growing pulp and paper industry. As this comparative examination of two Brazilian pulp producers, Aracruz Celulose S.A. and Riocell S.A., demonstrates, companies face a wide range of environmental, social, and economic forces as they try to balance efficiency and sustainability in plantation forestry. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (4)

Creating sustainability is categorically different from reducing unsustainability
"Sustainability by Design" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction.Professor Ehrenfeld's book interview ran here as cover feature on February 3, 2009.

Riding on a Buzzword
This obscurantist tome isn't about sustainability at all, but rather the author's desire for a more holistic, more caring and more authentic world. People will think about each other and not their damn noisy cellphones, listen to Nature and those damn kids will get off his lawn. This will be accomplished with a mixture of focus groups, company nature retreats and stylish Swedish furniture.

The writing is impenetrable and the diagrams he uses to illustrate his points somehow make them harder to understand and his use of quotation marks calls for strict punishment.

Excellent, provocative work.
Bought this book for my Energy and Society class. It is the last of four books we read this semester, and was an excellent conclusion to the course. The author addresses the root causes of energy scarcity and provides a basic framework for sustainability in which the human race can ultimately thrive.
5/5 Stars

Thinking for a Change
Mr. Ehrenfeld offers a broadly appealing and immediately accessible definition of sustainability: "sustainability is the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on the Earth forever."

Now isn't that what we really want? And to address this higher view of things, don't you necessarily need to think more deeply about the issue than simply neutralizing a negative situation--which is what virtually every other book in this genre attempts to do?

That's what I like about this book, that Ehrenfeld takes a systems look at a systemic issue. He looks at mindset -- the subtitle is "A Subversive Strategy for transforming Our Consumer Culture" -- and that's what is so attractive.

Ehrenfeld, formerly of MIT (a noted breeding ground for systems thinkers), is executive director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology and senior research scholar at Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and you can tell he's been thinking about this for a long tim. It shows in how he approaches the challenge of sustainability. For example, he uses words and phrases that resonate will resonate with anyone who is interested in a more mindful approach to a complex issue. "Reflection" is the first threshold to cross, he says. And he talks about "structures," which appeals to my sense of the importance in properly framing problems. And he talks about "nurturing possibility."

You see, we too often incorrectly ask the question "What are the alternatives" before we ask "What is possible?"

If you're a fan of Peter Senge (who writes the Foreword) and The Fifth Discipline like I am, you'll enjoy the author's foray into single and double loop thinking. From there, he looks at root cause, that being an addiction to resources (a phrase I often use!) linked to the cultures of consumption in the modern, industrialized world. And then he offers his definition of sustainability, and the whole construct hangs together quite nicely.

Woven throughout the book is a subtext of respect, of simply caring about others and the world we live in enough to wrap our designs around that thought in a very purposeful way. If only we could hold that core value tightly enough, hold on to the tension created between where we are and where we need to be, our designs -- our innovation processes and innovative outcomes -- would go far in moving the planet toward a sustainable vision of the future.

And that future, the author says, does not have "a revolution waiting in the wings," because he does not believe "that such a revolution would necessarily be the best change mechanism." ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (5)

Great Introduction to Sustainability Issues
I found this book to be a great primer and had many examples that I could use to help show the cases for sustainability for clients that were considering implementing and/or growing their sustainability efforts.It is a quick read and drives home the point that a company's efforts should be complimentary to what they "do" as a business.

A useful perspective
This book was required reading for a course in Environmental Intrapreneurism. The author's background in corporate management makes him ideally suited to help position environmental recommendations in the context of the corporation by helping to build the business case on a solid economic as well as "green" foundation.The writing is very straighforward and based on many interviews of corporate as well as non-profit leaders.The inclusion of quotation from many of the interviews (which seems at first to be a bit incidental) ultimately helps to reinforce the content.

Excellent Resource
My job brings me in contact with many F1000 executives who have responsibility for CSR/citizenship/responsibility/sustainability/etc and I read this book to broaden my view of the topic. I found it to be interesting in its format, content and point of view. I highly recommend it if sustainability is taking on a strategic importance to your business and you need to hold your own when discussing the finer points of it all with senior management and boards. Or, you are a senior manager and need to reach decisions about the role of sustainability in your planning. Read this book. You won't regret the investment of time or money.

Easy read, straightforward
This is the first book I read on the topic of sustainability and I found it to be very approachable.The concepts were easy to grasp and it was written/formatted to be part example, part theory.I'd recommend it wholeheartedly.

Great resource for corporate insiders
I've been looking for quite awhile for a book that provides support for introducing sustainability thinking into business planning in a way that might appeal to CEOs. I didn't find one until I found this new book by Bob Willard. (Note: Hunter Lovins provides a foreword).
Bob Willard claims this book fills a unique niche, and as far as I know he's right. And it's an important niche for readers who are trying to build a business case for sustainability.
The book is an easy read, which shouldn't be confused with a simplistic treatment of complex information. Willard organizes a lot of material drawn from a wide range of sources into a coherent and well-argued whole. He also includes a lot of well selected quotations around the topic.
His bibliography at the end of the book is also very good. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

A clear pick for any library concerned with green social changes
Thriving Beyond Sustainability: Pathways to a Resilient Society is for any collection strong in environmental studies or current affairs, offering keys to individual, organization and community action around the world that are building alternative pathways. From green commerce and ecological design to social changes, this is a clear pick for any library concerned with green social changes.

Inspiring Solutions
INSPIRINGSOLUTIONS

At last, a holistic picture of a transformed way of living on the earth!
Not just living, but "thriving."

The book ties together stories about initiatives now underway
to transform "five interrelated global trends:
ecosystem decline,
energy transition,
population growth,
economic disparity,and
climate change."

These stories draw a collective picture of new ways of doing things to restore our personal and cultural health and rejuvenate the ecosystem.Thriving Beyond Sustainability gives examples of the outer situation we find ourselves in along with the resources - outer and inner - we have to bring about new possibilities. Edwards encourages the shift from "sustaining" to "thriving" as a challenge to expand our imagination and focus on the capacity of the human spirit to collaborate in creating meaningful changes that improve the lives of all species.

Thrivability thus becomes a new code word for recognizing the human "capacity for empathy, compassion, collaboration, playfulness, creativity, enthusiasm and love."This seems an easy shift to make, and cuts through ideas that separate classes, races, nationalities, and religions.Once we acknowledge that humans are innately cooperative and seek to thrive, competition and scarcity become outdated concepts and we see how the "examples" can become themainstream. I fully embrace this book.
... Read more

Product Description
Miami University in Oxford, Ohio offers a course entitled "Sustainability Perspectives," based on this text.The course was awarded "The Instructional Innovation Award" at the 1996 annual meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute, an association of Decision Science professionals headquartered at Georgia State University in Atlanta.The 1990's have seen the development of important new approaches to sustaining corporate development and protecting the environment. Corporations are beginning to realize their responsibilities for a healthy environment. Sustainable development is viewed as an integrated, ecological, economic, and social system in which both economic growth and quality-of-life improvements can occur in a unified system complementary to the maintenance of natural capital. Sustainability Perspectives for Resources and Businesses shows the reader that a sound understanding of the concepts involved in sustainable development is beneficial to businesses, natural resources, and the population in general.This textbook was written to help students and professionals involved in business, science, or engineering to understand the changes occurring in the workplace. It serves as a step toward understanding how business and science, as professional communities, are adapting to new information about risks to the environment. Various chapters are devoted to resources, values, and valuation systems. Each section develops principles such as resilience and integrity in the economy and the environment. ... Read more

Product Description

Energy - its source, security, price, and the efficiency of its use, are increasingly important issues for a diverse range of people.