Sustainability Science

This textbook surveys key issues of sustainability - energy, nature, agro-food, resources, economics - for advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses.

Bert J. M. de Vries (Author)

9780521184700, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 December 2012

605 pages, 147 b/w illus. 19 colour illus. 26 tables
25.3 x 17.8 x 2.7 cm, 1.24 kg

'Bert de Vries' Sustainability Science is particularly welcome as it breaks ground in a new field, which so far lacks a proper systematic treatment. No wonder! The challenge is overwhelming: the book covers a series of disciplines and fields - geography, social and economic sciences, physics, chemistry, and biology - using a systems description and system dynamics as the main tool. De Vries not only succeeds in this overwhelming task but spices up the text with multiple excursions into history, philosophy, literature, not to forget the key issue of ethics. Justice and how we would like a future world to look like is always present. Bert's book is impressive, rich and inspiring.' Lars Rydén, Centre for Sustainable Development, Uppsala University

Sustainable development is becoming the guiding principle for the twenty-first century. This textbook - based on the author's course and rigorously class-tested by his students - provides an introduction into patterns of past and present (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 and resource systems, and economic growth. System analysis and modelling is introduced and used as an integrating tool. Stories and worldviews are used to connect the quantitative and the qualitative and to offer the reader an understanding of relevant trends and events in context. Sustainability Science is an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses in sustainable development and in environmental and resource science and policy.

1. Introduction
2. The systems dynamics perspective
3. In search of sustainability: past civilizations
4. The world in the past 300 years: the Great Acceleration
5. Sustainability: concerns and definitions
6. Quality of life: on values, knowledge and worldviews
7. Energy fundamentals
8. On knowledge and models
9. Ecosystems
10. Human populations and human behaviour
11. Agro-food systems
12. Renewable resources: water, fish and forest
13. Non-renewable resources: the industrial economy
14. Towards a sustainable economy
15. Outlook on the futures.

Subject Areas: Sustainability [RNU], Social impact of environmental issues [RNT], Environmental management [RNF], The environment [RN]