Ideas about sustainability have changed considerably since the Climate Change Convention was agreed in Rio de Janeiro 20 years ago. This volume re-examines the concept of sustainability and considers what issues are now considered pertinent around the world.

It demonstrates that a great deal has been achieved in the field of environmental law since the 1990s. However, the extraordinary environmental crises facing humanity in the 21st century indicate a continuing urgent need for the generation of robus

From Rhetoric to Actio: Policies for Sustainable Development; Selected Case Studies from the Policy Matrix.

Urban communities around the world face increased stress from natural disasters linked to climate change, and other urban pressures. They need to grow rapidly stronger in order to cope, adapt and flourish. Strong social networks and social cohesion can be more important for a community’s resilience than the actual physical structures of a city. But how can urban planning and design support these critical collective social strengths? This book offers blue sky thinking from the applied social and behavioural sciences, and urban planning. It looks at case studies from 14 countries around the world – including India, the USA, South Africa, Indonesia, the UK and New Zealand – focusing on initiatives for housing, public space and transport stops, and also natural disasters such as flooding and earthquakes. Building on these insights, the authors propose a 'gold standard': a socially aware planning process and policy recommendation for those drawing up city sustainability and climate change resilience strategies, and urban developers looking to build climate-proof infrastructure and spaces. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of urban studies, resilience studies and climate change policy, as well as policymakers and practitioners working in related fields.

Forty years after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the goal of sustainable development continues via the Rio+20 conference in 2012. This book will enable a broad readership to understand what has been achieved in the past forty years and what hasn’t. It shows the continuing threat of our present way of living to the planet. It looks to the challenges that we face twenty years from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, "The Earth Summit," in Rio, in particular in the areas of economics and governance and the role of stakeholders. It puts forward a set of recommendations that the international community must address now and in the the future. It reminds us of the planetary boundaries we must all live within and and what needs to be addressed in the next twenty years for democracy, equity and fairness to survive. Finally it proposes through the survival agenda a bare minimum of what needs to be done, arguing for a series of absolute minimum policy changes we need to move forward.

Comprises 19 papers which are revised versions of papers presented to the Congress on the environment after Rio, held at Courmayeur, Italy in 1993. The papers are grouped under four themes: the Rio Conference between policy and law; declarations and conventions adopted at Rio; prospects for the future in light of Agenda 21 and evolving international environmental; and environment, development and interdependence.

This book is about cities as engines of consumption of the world's environment. It examines these issues through the impact of the Rio Declaration and assesses the extent to which it has made a difference.