What has prompted the shift toward sustainability in numerous financial areas? Can investors' mindsets be changed to embrace a long-term view? Can shareholders and activists play a greater role in encouraging financial actors to behave more responsibly? These are some of the relevant topics that are explored in this forward-looking set of essays.

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of FAO’s Committee on Forestry, this edition of Unasylva showcases ways in which forests are delivering the "four betters" and underscores how forests are crucial for resilient and sustainable agrifood systems in a changing climate. As FAO’s longest running periodical, Unasylva focuses on issues and themes relevant to forestry and forest industries and aims to bring globally significant developments in forestry to policy-makers, forest managers, technicians, researchers, students and teachers around the globe.

Many people are concerned about the future. We need a world that is safer, cleaner and more secure. The required approach must have a global perspective. This book will help them feel enpowered and optimistic, will provide solutions to the world's concerns, and will provide specific approaches for them to follow. For a more complete description see the Preface.

A deeply researched international history and "exemplary study" (New York Times Book Review) of how a divided world ended and our present world was fashioned, as the world drifts toward another great time of choosing. Two of America's leading scholar-diplomats, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, have combed sources in several languages, interviewed leading figures, and drawn on their own firsthand experience to bring to life the choices that molded the contemporary world. Zeroing in on the key moments of decision, the might-have-beens, and the human beings working through them, they explore both what happened and what could have happened, to show how one world ended and another took form. Beginning in the late 1970s and carrying into the present, they focus on the momentous period between 1988 and 1992, when an entire world system changed, states broke apart, and societies were transformed. Such periods have always been accompanied by terrible wars -- but not this time. This is also a story of individuals coping with uncertainty. They voice their hopes and fears. They try out desperate improvisations and careful designs. These were leaders who grew up in a "postwar" world, who tried to fashion something better, more peaceful, more prosperous, than the damaged, divided world in which they had come of age. New problems are putting their choices, and the world they made, back on the operating table. It is time to recall not only why they made their choices, but also just how great nations can step up to great challenges. Timed for the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, To Build a Better World is an authoritative depiction of contemporary statecraft. It lets readers in on the strategies and negotiations, nerve-racking risks, last-minute decisions, and deep deliberations behind the dramas that changed the face of Europe -- and the world -- forever.

A diverse collection of regional experts explore contemporary trends, alternative visions, and new directions for sociological research, raising issues that reflect the complexity of challenges facing future projects on a shared planet.

In his memoir, Towards a Better World, Helleiner recounts his profound trip to Africa, a trip that propelled him into a career devoted to the research, advice and teaching of economic development and the reduction of global poverty.

The planet is becoming increasingly urban. In many ways, the urbanization wave and the unprecedented urban growth of the past 20 years have created a sense of urgency and an impetus for change. Some 54 percent of the world population—3.9 billion people—lives in urban areas today; thus, it has become clear that “business as usual†? is no longer possible. This new configuration places great expectations on local governments. While central governments are subject to instability and political changes, local governments are seen as more inclined to stay the course. Because they are closer to the people, the voice of the people is more clearly heard for a truly democratic debate over the choice of neighborhood investments and city-wide policies and programs, as well as the decision process on the use of public funds and taxpayers’ money. In a context of skewed financial resources and complex urban challenges—which range from the provision of basic traditional municipal services to the “newer†? agenda of social inclusion, economic development, city branding, emergency response, smart technologies, and green investment—more cities are searching for more effective and innovative ways to deal with new and old problems. Better Cities, Better World: A Handbook on Local Governments Self-Assessments is at the heart of this debate. It recognizes the complex past, current, and future challenges that cities face and outlines a bottom-line, no-nonsense framework for data-based policy dialogue and action; a common language that, for the first time, helps connect the dots between public investments programming (Urban Audit/Self-Assessment) and financing (Municipal Finances Self-Assessment). It helps address two key questions, too often bypassed when it comes to municipal infrastructure and services financing: Are we doing the right things? Are we doing things right? Better Cities, Better World: A Handbook on Local Governments Self-Assessments offers a bit of everything for everyone. • Central governments will be attracted by the purposefulness and clarity of these tools, their impact on local government capacity and performance building, and how they improve the implementation of transformative actions for policy change. • City leaders and policy makers will find the sections on objectives and content instructive and informative, with each issue placed in its context, and strong connections between data and municipal action. • Municipal staff in charge of day-to-day management will find that the sections on tasks and the detailed step-by-step walk through the process give them the pragmatic knowhow that they need. • Cities’ partners—such as bilateral and multilateral agencies, banks and funds, utility companies, civil society, and private operators—will find the foundations for more effective collaborative partnerships.

This book is about the global environmental and economic crisis. It challenges the whole global economic system and its underlying beliefs, assumptions and values. We need a complete system transformation, a paradigm shift. This requires holistic and whole system thinking. It is a thoroughly hopeful book. The focus is on the possibility of a better world, a more fulfilling way of life, rather than what’s wrong or what we have to give up. Could this book be the best one on the global environmental and economic crisis? The central argument is that we, ordinary people, 6.7 billion of us, need to use our people power to bring about a sustainable, fairer and non-violent world. This means putting our governments under constant pressure to do more and represent citizens’ interests and not those of big business. There are many books about the global crisis. But few, aimed at empowering ordinary people, take a holistic approach. It is for those many people who are concerned, open minded and ready to act.

In 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next 40 Years (Chelsea Green, 2012), Jorgen Randers draws on his own experience in the sustainability area, global forecasting tools, and the predictions - included in the book as 'Glimpses' - of more than thirty thought leaders to guide us through the future he feels is most likely to emerge towards the middle of the century. At a meeting of 25 of the 'Glimpse' authors in Cambridge in October 2013, each participant was invited to present a 'great idea' (or thought, or development or fact) that they believed could improve on world developments over the next forty years. Disrupting the Future - Great ideas for Creating a Much Better Future is the result of this process and is a remarkable collection of ideas and proposals by a diverse set of thought-leaders, each of which has responded in their own creative way to Jorgen Randers' concluding challenge in 2052: 'Please help me make my forecast wrong. Together we could create a much better world.'

The publication will reflect Lord Desai's work in diverse fields of the social sciences (economics, philosophy, political science) as well as his passionate commitment to the freedom and wellbeing of individuals, and his optimism about human progress and globalisation.