Sustainability science

Описание

SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE
Sustainable development is becoming the guiding principle for the 21st century. It is about quality of life: how to develop it and how to sustain it within
planetary boundaries. ‘Sustainability science’ has emerged recently as a new
academic discipline and is a growing area of both research and teaching.
Sustainability science seeks to:
advance basic understanding of the dynamics of human-environment
systems and forge bridges between the natural and social sciences and
between science and policy;
appreciate the variety of perspectives on sustainable development and
the variety of contexts for its design, implementation, and evaluation in
particular situations.
Bert J. M. de Vries has taught a course on sustainability science at Utrecht
University for many years, in connection to his research at the Netherlands
Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). This textbook is based on that
course. The contents have been rigorously class-tested by his students. The
book provides a historical introduction into patterns of past (un)sustainable
development and into the emergence of the notion of sustainable development. It systematically surveys the key concepts, models and findings of the
various scientific disciplines with respect to the major sustainability issues:
energy, nature, agro-food systems, renewable and non-renewable resource
systems and economic growth. System analysis and modelling are introduced
and used as integrating tools. Stories and worldviews are used throughout
the text to connect the quantitative and the qualitative and to offer the
reader an understanding of relevant trends and events in context. The reader
is explicitly invited to engage at a personal level into the interpretation of
what sustainable development means and what implications this has for
ideas and actions.
Sustainability Science is an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduateand graduate-level courses in sustainable development, environmental science and policy, ecology, conservation, natural resources and geopolitics.
Bert J. M. de Vries is co-founder of the Institute for Energy and Environment (IVEM) at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where
he received his Ph.D. on sustainable resource use. Since 1990, he has been a
senior scientist at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL,
formerly MNP and RIVM). He has been actively involved in modelling and
scenario construction for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC). Since 2003, he has also been a Professor of Global Change and
Energy at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. His research expertise
and publications are in resource and energy analysis, modelling and policy;
climate and global change modelling; and complex systems modelling for sustainable development. He has co-edited several books, including Perspectives
on Global Change: The TARGETS Approach (Cambridge University Press,
1997) and Mappae Mundi: Humans and Their Habitats in a Long-Term SocioEcological Perspective (2002).

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