Humanity is failing at solving complex socio-ecological problems like global climate change, biodiversity loss and population growth. The existing 'sustainable development' paradigm and its reliance on trade-offs between the three pillars of environment, economics, and equity is not robust enough to maintain global carrying capacity. In this timely intervention, Thomas argues that the holistic and transdisciplinary thinking of four iconic American naturalists - Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and Edward O. Wilson - can instead help to solve our biggest twenty-first century challenges by synthesizing values from four eras of cultural and environmental history.

Animal Texts examines critical works of American Environmental Literature for how they portray, discuss, and represent animals. By interweaving animal studies, literary animal studies, animal science, and close readings, the author establishes critical animal concepts for environmental literature that expand the understanding and knowledge of animal lives to promote conservation and meaningful reflection on current human-animal relationships. Lauren E. Perry-Rummel demonstrates the grave importance and promise these writers saw in the animals alongside them by examining the textual proof of how America's great environmental writers viewed animals. The author’s tracing of animal texts begins with late nineteenth century American texts from Sarah Orne Jewett, Jack London, into the mid-early twentieth century, ecologically focused works of Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, into the later twentieth century with the musings of Edward Abbey and the devastating memoir of Terry Tempest Williams, and ending with the contemporary species-centric works of Nate Blakeslee and Dan Flores.

How do Americans view environmental issues? This study by a team of cognitive anthropologists reveals similarities in the way different groups of Americans view environmental change, while also showing that Americans may have misunderstandings about these

In history, cities and nature are often treated as two separate fields of research. »Concepts of Urban-Environmental History« aims to bridge this gap. The contributions to this volume survey major concepts and key issues which have shaped recent debates in the field. They address unresolved questions and future challenges. As a handbook, the collection offers a comprehensive overview for researchers and students, both from a historical and an interdisciplinary background.

This book examines from a multidisciplinary viewpoint the question of what we mean - what we should mean - by setting sustainability as a goal for environmental management. The author, trained as a philosopher of science and language, explores ways to break down the disciplinary barriers to communication and deliberation about environment policy, and to integrate science and evaluations into a more comprehensive environmental policy. Choosing sustainability as the keystone concept of environmental policy, the author explores what we can learn about sustainable living from the philosophy of pragmatism, from ecology, from economics, from planning, from conservation biology and from related disciplines. The idea of adaptive, or experimental, management provides the context, while insights from various disciplines are integrated into a comprehensive philosophy of environmental management. The book will appeal to students and professionals in the fields of environmental policy and ethics, conservation biology, and philosophy of science.

While many disciplines contribute to environmental conservation, there is little successful integration of science and social values. Arguing that the central problem in conservation is a lack of effective communication, Bryan Norton shows in Sustainability how current linguistic resources discourage any shared, multidisciplinary public deliberation over environmental goals and policy. In response, Norton develops a new, interdisciplinary approach to defining sustainability—the cornerstone of environmental policy—using philosophical and linguistic analyses to create a nonideological vocabulary that can accommodate scientific and evaluative environmental discourse. Emphasizing cooperation and adaptation through social learning, Norton provides a practical framework that encourages an experimental approach to language clarification and problem formulation, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to creating solutions. By moving beyond the scientific arena to acknowledge the importance of public discourse, Sustainability offers an entirely novel approach to environmentalism.

"Sustainability has become an issue widely debated in many countries. Given the central role of food supply and the emotional relationship that modern mankind still has to its food, sustainability is seen as a value which has to be maintained throughout food supply chains. The complexity of modern food systems invokes a variety of ethical implications which emerge from contrasts between ideals, perceptions and the conditions of technical processes within food systems, and the concerns connected to this. This book covers a broad range of aspects within the general issue of sustainable food production and ethics. Linking different academic disciplines, topics range from reflections about the roots of sustainability and the development of concepts and approaches to globalisation and resilience of food systems as well as specific ethical aspects of organic farming and animal welfare. Modern technologies which are intensely advocated by certain stakeholder groups and their societal challenges are addressed, as are many other specific cases of food production and processing, consumer perception and marketing."

"... an important contribution to environmental philosophy.... includes provocative discussions of institutional and systemic violence, indigenous resistance to 'development,' the land ethic, deep ecology, ecofeminism, women's ecological knowledge, Jeffersonian agrarian republicanism, Berry's ideas about 'principled engagement in community,' wilderness advocacy, and the need for an attachment to place." -- Choice "[T]his is a very important book, raising serious questions for development theorists and environmentalists alike." -- Boston Book Review When Indian centenarian Chinnagounder asked Deane Curtin about his interest in traditional medicine, especially since he wasn't working for a drug company looking to patent a new discovery, Curtin wondered whether it was possible for the industrialized world to interact with native cultures for reasons other than to exploit them, develop them, and eradicate their traditional practices. The answer, according to Curtin, defines the ethical character of what we typically call 'progress.' Despite the familiar assertion that we live in a global village, cross-cultural environmental and social conflicts are often marked by failures of communication due to deeply divergent assumptions. Curtin articulates a response to Chinnagounder's challenge in terms of a new, distinctly postcolonial, environmental ethic.

A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.

Sustainability is one of the key concepts underlying our thinking about corporate responsibilities, particularly with respect to the environment and inter-generational justice, but also in relation to corporate governance and the long-term economic viability. The advantages of the discourse of Sustainability are that it brings together contemporary economic and moral imperatives in the context of scientific knowledge. Its disadvantages relate to its open-ended content, its systematic ambiguity, and the internal tensions between economic growth, human survival and global justice. The essays in this volume reflect these strengths and weaknesses from a variety of viewpoints - economic, scientific, social and philosophical. They illustrate and illuminate the varied and contested content and utility of this currently popular concept and point to its multiple implications for the development of corporate responsibilities.