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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.