The Positive Deviant: Sustainability Leadership in a Perverse World

An economy low in carbon and high in life satisfaction will require thousands, if not millions of exceptional leaders. This book is the first to bring together sustainability knowledge with the leadership skills and tools to help you become one of those leaders. In it you will find everything you need to get started straight away, and to grow your effectiveness, even in a world that remains perversely intent on the opposite.

Whether you are new to the whole idea of sustainability, or reasonably well informed but not entirely confident about what to do for the best, this guide will help you ‘do’ sustainability. Free of checklists and policy recommendations, the focus is on you, and on developing your capacity to identify the right thing to do wherever you are and whatever your circumstances. This is essential reading for those in or aspiring to sustainability-literate leadership, and a must for all those teaching leadership and management.

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The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture: Managing Systems at Risk: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture is FAO’s first flagship publication on the global status of land and water resources. It is an ‘advocacy’ report, to be published every three to five years, and targeted at senior level decision makers in agriculture as well as in other sectors. SOLAW is aimed at sensitizing its target audience on the status of land resources at global and regional levels and FAO’s viewpoint on appropriate recommendations for policy formulation. SOLAW focuses on these key dimensions of analysis: (i) quantity, quality of land and water resources, (ii) the rate of use and sustainable management of these resources in the context of relevant socio-economic driving factors and concerns, including food security and poverty, and climate change.

This is the first time that a global, baseline status report on land and water resources has been made. It is based on several global spatial databases (e.g. land suitability for agriculture, land use and management, land and water degradation and depletion) for which FAO is the world-recognized data source. Topical and emerging issues on land and water are dealt with in an integrated rather than sectoral manner. The implications of the status and trends are used to advocate remedial interventions which are tailored to major farming systems within different geographic regions.

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Food-Matters

Researching Sustainability: A Guide to Social Science Methods, Practice and Engagement

This book is for students and researchers across the social sciences who are planning, conducting and disseminating research on sustainability-related issues. Real-world sustainability problems cross many boundaries, and this is the first book to guide students and practitioners through the practical and theoretical challenges of doing interdisciplinary research in this vital and emerging area.

Researching Sustainability contains many in-depth, ‘hands on’ accounts by expert contributors, providing real-life examples and lessons that can be put to use immediately. Coverage includes:

• the general challenges that sustainability presents to researchers, including frictions between sustainability and scientific tradition; complexity; research paradigms; interdisciplinarity; social-environmental interactions; and ethical concerns.
• a host of social science based research methods and approaches. Each chapter presents a different method; its challenges and suitability for different situations; an in-depth example of the method in action; insights and lessons.
• dissemination of sustainability research findings, including influencing policy, communicating with school children and working with the media.

The book concludes with a critical synthesis of issues and methods examined in the book together with a discussion of future research pathways. This book is an essential tool for students, researchers and practitioners in planning, implementing and evaluating their sustainability research.

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Sustainability Unpacked: Food, Energy and Water for Resilient Environments and Societies

Food, water and energy form some of the basic elements of sustainability considerations. This ground-breaking book examines and decodes these elements, exploring how a range of countries make decisions regarding their energy and bio-resource consumption and procurement.

The authors consider how these choices impact not only the societies and environments of those countries, but the world in general. To achieve this, the authors review the merits of various sustainability and environmental metrics, and then apply these to 34 countries that are ranked low, medium or high on the human development index.

The book assesses their resource capacities and the environmental impacts, both within and outside their country boundaries, from consuming food, water, and energy. The final section uses the lessons derived from the earlier analyses of resource consumption to explore the importance of geography, climates and sustainable management of forests and other natural resources for building resilient societies in the future.

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Believing Cassandra: How to be an Optimist in a Pessimist’s World

A bestseller on Amazon.com within months of its first release, Alan AtKisson’s debut book quickly became a modern classic of sustainability literature. Global companies, grassroots groups, university courses, government agencies, and even the US Army ordered it by the box. Now fully revised and updated, Believing Cassandra: How to be an Optimist in a Pessimist’s World is even more relevant, fresh, and motivating than when it first appeared in 1999.

In a style that’s refreshingly candid and vivid, with unforgettable personal anecdotes, AtKisson provides us with a bridge over the sea of despair, and shows us how to catch the wave to an enticing, sustainable future. He empowers the reader to join the pioneers who created the ideas, techniques and practices of sustainable living – the people who prove Cassandra’s warnings wrong, by believing in them, and taking strategic action.

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Gender and Climate Change: An Introduction

Although climate change affects everybody it is not gender neutral. It has significant social impacts and magnifies existing inequalities such as the disparity between women and men in their vulnerability and ability to cope with this global phenomenon. This new textbook, edited by one of the authors of the seminal Women and the Environment in the Third World: Alliance for the Future (1988) which first exposed the links between environmental degradation and unequal impacts on women, provides a comprehensive introduction to gender aspects of climate change. Over 35 authors have contributed to the book. It starts with a short history of the thinking and practice around gender and sustainable development over the past decades. Next it provides a theoretical framework for analyzing climate change manifestations and policies from the perspective of gender and human security.

Drawing on new research, the actual and potential effects of climate change on gender equality and women’s vulnerabilities are examined, both in rural and urban contexts. This is illustrated with a rich range of case studies from all over the world and valuable lessons are drawn from these real experiences. Too often women are primarily seen as victims of climate change, and their positive roles as agents of change and contributors to livelihood strategies are neglected. The book disputes this characterization and provides many examples of how women around the world organize and build resilience and adapt to climate change and the role they are playing in climate change mitigation.

The final section looks at how far gender mainstreaming in climate mitigation and adaptation has advanced, the policy frameworks in place and how we can move from policy to effective action. Accompanied by a wide range of references and key resources, this book provides students and professionals with an essential, comprehensive introduction to the gender aspects of climate change.

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The New Peasantries: Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization

‘Jan Douwe van der Ploeg combines long engagement in the empirical study of farming and farmers, and of alternative agricultures, in very different parts of the world, with a sophisticated analytical acumen and capacity to provoke in fruitful ways.’ Henry Bernstein, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK ‘This book makes a timely and original contribution. The author revitalizes our interest in peasant societies through an in-depth examination of how rural populations in state systems respond to neo-liberal globalization.’ Robert E. Rhoades, Distinguished Research Professor, University of Georgia, US ‘There is an increasing interest in this topic, especially as the author links the debate on the peasantry with Empire and Globalization. He has an excellent reputation in the field and is highly qualified to write this book, which draws on his extensive worldwide experience with the issues he discusses.’ Cristobal Kay, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands This book explores the position, role and significance of the peasantry in an era of globalization, particularly of the agrarian markets and food industries.

It argues that the peasant condition is characterized by a struggle for autonomy that finds expression in the creation and development of a self-governed resource base and associated forms of sustainable development. In this respect the peasant mode of farming fundamentally differs from entrepreneurial and corporate ways of farming.

The author demonstrates that the peasantries are far from waning. Instead, both industrialized and developing countries are witnessing complex and richly chequered processes of ‘re-peasantization’, with peasants now numbering over a billion worldwide. The author’s arguments are based on three longitudinal studies (in Peru, Italy and The Netherlands) that span 30 years and provide original and thought-provoking insights into rural and agrarian development processes. The book combines and integrates different bodies of literature: the rich traditions of peasant studies, development sociology, rural sociology, neo-institutional economics and the recently emerging debates on Empire.

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Food-Matters

The Power of Sustainable Thinking: How to Create a Positive Future for the Climate, the Planet, Your Organization and Your Life

The future will be powered by sustainable thinking in business, organizations, governments and everyday life. This revolutionary book tackles climate change, sustainability and life success by starting with your mind. It provides proven ‘staged-based’ methods for transforming thinking and behaviour, beginning first with the reader’s own cognitive patterns, then moving to how individuals can motivate other people to change, and finally to how teams and organizations can be motivated to change.

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The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Food and Gastronomy (Routledge Handbooks)

The issues surrounding the provision, preparation and development of food products is fundamental to every human being on the planet. Given the scarcity of agricultural land, environmental pollution, climate change and the exponential growth of the world’s population where starvation and obesity are both widespread it is little wonder that exploring the frontiers of food is now a major focus for researchers and practitioners.

This timely Handbook provides a systematic guide to the current state of knowledge on sustainable food. It begins by analyzing the historical development surrounding food production and consumption, then moves on to discuss the current food crisis and challenges as well as the impacts linked to modern agriculture and food security. Finally, it concludes with a section that examines emerging sustainable food trends and movements in addition to an analysis of current food science innovations. Developed from specifically commissioned original contributions the Handbook’s inherent multidisciplinary approach paves the way for deeper understanding of all aspects linked to the evolution of food in society, including insights into local food, food and tourism, organic food, indigenous and traditional food, sustainable restaurant practices, consumption patterns and sourcing.

This book is essential reading for students, researches and academics interested in the possibilities of sustainable forms of gastronomy and gastronomy’s contribution to sustainable development.

The title includes a foreword written by Roberto Flore, Head Chef at the Nordic Food Lab, Copenhagen, Denmark.

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The Economics of Green Growth: New indicators for sustainable societies (Routledge Studies in Ecological Economics)

The Economics of Green Growth investigates the possibility of creating an integrated indicator covering three pillars of sustainable development: economy, society and the environment. The excessive pursuit of economic efficiency has resulted in severe environmental problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss, and societal human issues such as inequality and disparity.

The book aims to change the direction of economic growth towards one which is more sustainable. It explores beyond the conventional indicator, the GDP that measures economic growth and human well-being. It also introduces new indicators relevant to sustainable development and a green economy and discusses the key issues for these indicators.

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