Sustainability unpacked : food, energy and water for resilient environments and societies / / by Kristiina Vogt, Toral Patel-Weynand, Maura Shelton, Daniel J Vogt, John C. Gordon, Cal Mukumoto, Asep. S. Suntana and Patricia A. Roads

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910459157803321
• Autore: Vogt Kristiina A.
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Boca Raton, FL : , : Routledge, an imprint of Taylor and Francis, , [2012]; ©2011
• ISBN: 1-280-87453-8; 9786613715845; 1-136-53061-4; 1-136-53060-6; 1-84977-665-2
• Edizione: [First edition.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (329 p.)
• Disciplina: 333.72
• Soggetti: Environment; Environmental responsibility; Sustainable living; Anthropology; Social Sciences; Anthropogeography & Human Ecology; Electronic books.
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di contenuto: Sustainability UnpackedFood, Energy and Water for Resilient Environments and Societies; Copyright; Contents; Authors and Contributors; Preface; List of Figures and Tables; Part 1: From the Beginning; 1. Sustainability - Clues for Positive Societal and Ecosystem Change; Defining Sustainability; Why Sustainability Needs to be Unpacked; Decoding Our Current Perceptions of Sustainability and Is There a Right Model?; Large Datasets and Moving Beyond Irrational Human Choices; Using Human Development Ranking to Understand Large Datasets; 2. Learning From the PAST:Why Societies Collapsed or ; Survived; Why People Live Where They DoWhere is it easier for humans to live within their footprints?; Where is it difficult for humans to live within their footprints?; Industrialization Fuelled by Carbon; A history of how society became dependent on 'artificial' products made from fossil carbon; Agrarian societies are dependent on renewable carbon; The 'carbonization' of society and the importance of coal; Oil made our 'synthetic' world possible; The Norm:Transboundary Consumption of Someone Else's Resources; Human History: A Search for Food Security; Food and social status; Food preservation for food securityRestaurants and our perceptions of food security; A Long Human History of Poor Health; Accidental Reductions in Human Resource Uses; Part 2: Scientific Approach to Decoding Sustainability; 3. TODAY: Decoding Country Resource Stories; Indices and How they Characterize Sustainable Choices; Indices rank environmental/ecological metrics well; Human and resource capital disconnect; Indices and Advanced-Economy Countries; Indices and Emerging-Economy Countries; Indices and Growing-Economy Countries; Lessons Learnt From Indices; Part 3: The Real Country Stories; 4. Fossil Energy Endowments and ExternalitiesCO2 Emissions Link to Energy; CO2 emissions and total fossil fuel consumption; CO2 emissions and gasoline consumption; Societies and Fossil Energy Options; Diverse fossil energy portfolios the norm; Energy security after becoming a net importer of oil; Energy Production Is Water Demanding; 5. Forests - The Backbone and Circulatory System for Human Societies; Where do you Find Forests Today?; Energy Choices and Satisfying Human Survival Needs; Forests and Fossil Energies: Incompatible in a Conservation and Sustainable Development World?; CO2 Emissions, Land Use Changes and Forest Sequestration of CarbonLiquid Fuels from Forests to Mitigate CO2 Emissions; Environmental challenges to biofuels; Forest energy and sustainability from distributed energy production; Forest Uses have Negative Environmental Repercussions Elsewhere; 6. The Soil and Water Connection to Food: Adapt, Mitigate or Die; What Constrains Local Food Production?; Soil chemistry - sets the threshold for food production; Severely degraded lands and food production; Water Security and Soils; Part 4: Climate and Soils: Unavoidable Constraints to Solar Capital; 7. The FUTURE: Climate Change as a Global Driver Impacting Sustainability
• Sommario/riassunto: 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. 1. Sustainability - Clues for Positive Societal and Ecosystem Change2. Learning From the Past: Why Societies Collapsed or Survived3. Today: Decoding Country Resource Stories4. Fossil Energy Endowments and Externalities5. Forests - the Backbone and Circulatory System for Human Societies6. The Soil and Water Connection to Food: Adapt, Mitigate, or Die7. The Future: Climate Change as a Global Driver Impacting Sustainability8. Where the Past and Future meet: Soils or the Unseen Earth that Nurtures Societies9. The Ultimate Constraint to Human Sustainability: Solar IncomePART 2: Scientific Approach to Decoding SustainabilityPART 3: The Real Country StoriesPART 4. Climate and Soils: Unavoidable Constraints To Solar CapitalPART 5. Societies Adapt To a Quagmire of Resource ChoicesReferencesTo ; 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.