The Age Of Sustainability

With transitions to more sustainable ways of living already underway, this book examines how we understand the underlying dynamics of the transitions that are unfolding. Without this understanding, we enter the future in a state of informed bewilderment. Every day we are bombarded by reports about ecosystem breakdown, social conflict, economic stagnation and a crisis of identity. There is mounting evidence that deeper transitions are underway that suggest we may be entering another period of great transformation equal in significance to the agricultural revolution some 13,000 years ago or the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago. This book helps readers make sense of our global crisis and the dynamics of transition that could result in a shift from the industrial epoch that we live in now to a more sustainable and equitable age. The global renewable energy transition that is already underway holds the key to the wider just transition. However, the evolutionary potential of the present also manifests in the mushrooming of ecocultures, new urban visions, sustainability-oriented developmental states and new ways of learning and researching. Shedding light on the highly complex challenge of a sustainable and just transition, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with establishing a more sustainable and equitable world. Ultimately, this is a book about hope but without easy answers.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is one of the world's most perceptive and original analysts of global development. In this major new work he presents a compelling and practical framework for how global citizens can use a holistic way forward to address the seemingly intractable worldwide problems of persistent extreme poverty, environmental degradation, and political-economic injustice: sustainable development. Sachs offers readers, students, activists, environmentalists, and policy makers the tools, metrics, and practical pathways they need to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Far more than a rhetorical exercise, this book is designed to inform, inspire, and spur action. Based on Sachs's twelve years as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, his thirteen years advising the United Nations secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals, and his recent presentation of these ideas in a popular online course, The Age of Sustainable Development is a landmark publication and clarion call for all who care about our planet and global justice.

User Experience in the Age of Sustainability focuses on the economic, sociological and environmental movement in business to make all products including digital ones more sustainable. Not only are businesses finding a significant ROI from these choices, customers are demanding this responsible behaviour. The author looks at user experience practice through the lens of sustainability whether it be a smart phone, service - based subscription solutions or sustainable packaging to expose the ways in which user researchers and designers can begin to connect to the sustainability not merely as a theoretical. This book has a practical take on the matter providing a framework along with case studies and personal stories from doing this work successfully. Both hardware and software design are covered. Learn about the fundamentals of sustainability and how it can change the future of user experience professionals Learn how to integrate sustainability into designs with a solid framework using user research methodology, techniques, and purposeful metrics Find out how to integrate sustainability frameworks into the software and product development cycles Find out how sustainability applies to mobile and digital products with discussions on user messaging, dematerialization, and efficient design See how companies have made it work with case studies

Examining the potential benefits and risks of using artificial intelligence to advance global sustainability. Drones with night vision are tracking elephant and rhino poachers in African wildlife parks and sanctuaries; smart submersibles are saving coral from carnivorous starfish on Australia's Great Barrier Reef; recycled cell phones alert Brazilian forest rangers to the sound of illegal logging. The tools of artificial intelligence are being increasingly deployed in the battle for global sustainability. And yet, warns Peter Dauvergne, we should be cautious in declaring AI the planet's savior. In AI in the Wild, Dauvergne avoids the AI industry-powered hype and offers a critical view, exploring both the potential benefits and risks of using artificial intelligence to advance global sustainability.

This book reflects on the emerging trends, development, and challenges of policy on sustainability using information technology, and provides valuable insights to both research and practice communities. Sustainability has become an important focus for government, civil society and the corporate community world-wide. Growing interest in addressing environmental deterioration and associated social inequality and economic challenges is shifting focus to this important issue. The lack of fresh water and arable land, extreme weather, rising cost of relying on fossil fuels, and poverty and regional instability, are drawing attention to the need for government intervention and policy instruments that encourage the development of sustainable alternatives. Governments can play a very important role in facilitating sustainable development through better public policies. First of all, public investments can be directed toward establishing incentives for renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable agriculture, and land and water conservation, or toward leveling the field for sustainable alternatives by phasing out the subsidies directed to unsustainable production and development. Second, regulatory and pricing mechanisms could help with the development of markets for sustainable products. This book engages policy informatics analytical and modeling approaches, stakeholder engagement in policy development, implementation and evaluation, and big data and policy informatics to generate valuable insights in the policy on sustainable energy, and will be on interest to researchers in public administration and sustainability, open data and information technology ecological economics.​

This book offers an overview of sustainability and urban mobility in the context of urban planning – topics that are of considerable interest in the development of smart cities. Environmental sustainability is universally recognized as a fundamental condition for any urban policy or urban management activity, while mobility is essential for the survival of complex urban systems. The new opportunities offered by innovations in the mobility of people, goods and information, as well as radically changing interactions and activities are transforming cities. Including contributions by urban planning scholars, the book provides an up-to-date picture of the latest studies and innovative policies and practices in Italy, of particular interest due to its spatial, functional and social peculiarities. Sustainability and mobility must form the basis of “smart planning” – a new dimension of urban planning linked to two main innovations: procedural innovation in the management of territorial transformations and the technological innovation of the generation, processing and distribution of data (big data) for the creation of new "digital environments" such as GIS, BIM, models of augmented and mixed reality, useful for describing changes in human settlement in real time.

While most people acknowledge the toll of burning fossil fuels on earth's climate, few consider what will happen when demand for carbon-based fuels inevitably outstrips supply. In The Age of Sustainability Denis Pombriant evaluates and recommends solutions for energy provisioning and reducing carbon pollution that will keep the planet habitable and accommodating to human life. Far from being an unsolvable problem climate change and its solution should be seen as another in a long line of inflection points that have dotted human history. Cracking the problem is more like solving Rubic's Cube than playing whack-a-mole. As in all earlier eras, the next evolutionary step involves disruptive innovations beginning with new energy alternatives and treating carbon pollution as a chronic problem rather than as an emergency. By doubling the amount of photosynthesis planet-wide, we can stabilize climate and provision for the additional billions of people who will be born by mid-century. The Age of Sustainability shows that many the innovations needed to provide workable solutions are already available and that the free market is already adopting them. It also demonstrates how earlier generations have followed a common path to solving the big challenges of their times. This is a hopeful tour of solutions and, most importantly including economic models that will stabilize climate and provide a livable future for the human race.

In a time of unprecedented transformation as society seeks to build a more sustainable future, education plays an increasingly central role in training key agents of change. This book asks how we can equip students and scholars with the capabilities to promote sustainability and how the higher education curriculum can be changed to facilitate the paradigm shift needed. Across the globe, a rising number of higher education institutions and academics are responding to these questions by transforming their own teaching and learning and their institutions’ curricula. This book contributes to that development by examining in-depth case studies of innovative approaches and curriculum changes at multiple levels of the education sector. Elaborating key principles of higher education for sustainable development and identifying drivers and barriers to implementing sustainability in the curriculum, the book provides a comprehensive overview of what makes higher education for sustainable development a unique field of research and practice, as well as offering a coherent narrative of how change can be effected in it. This much-needed book is a valuable resource to inform, guide and inspire students, academics, administrators and community partners, whether experienced or new to the field, whether already committed or not to higher education for sustainable development in an age of transformation.