International

The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as If the Future Matters
by Diane Coyle

In this book economist Diane Coyle gives us a thoughtful, thorough, and somber account of the West’s, and the world’s, ecological and economic problems. Coyle correctly observes that these cannot be divorced from political and social problems; it is not enough to diagnose difficulties and then offer remedies that are politically unachievable. Instead, Coyle offers useful suggestions that might be implemented—if not by current governments then at least by imaginable governments. In doing all this, Coyle has done us a real service. And yet there is an important piece missing from Coyle’s analysis, without which it is hard to envision a way out of our current predicaments.

For more information on the book please see the Solution Journal web site.

Experiences of Climate Change Adaptation in Africa
ed. Walter Leal

This book presents a number of projects, field experiences and initiatives across the African continent, which show the degree of work and effort being put, to adapt to climate change. It is a rich source of information and inspiration to practitioners, member of international organisations, NGOs, aid agencies, Ministries, researchers and anyone interested to know more about the realities of climate change adaptation in Africa.

World on the Edge
How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse
by Lester R. Brown

We are facing issues of near-overwhelming complexity and unprecedented urgency. Our challenge is to think globally and develop policies to counteract environmental decline and economic collapse. The question is: Can we change direction before we go over the edge?

World on the Edge  is published by the Earth Policy Institute.

Drivers and Barriers to Implementing ESD with Focus on UNESCO's Action and Strategy Goals for the Second Half of the Decade
by D. Gross & S. Nakayama

Results of an international survey on UNESCO's goals have been published, performed by German-Japanese cooperation on ESD (NGO). The gained insights isolate those goals which will be most promising in being realized till the end of the Decade.

There are also critical comments on the German and Japanese governmental approaches for the Second Half.

Global Environmental Research, vol. 14, No. 2, 2010, AIRIES, Japan. Education for Sustainable Development: Promises and Challenges.

Guide to Process Based Modeling of Lakes and Coastal Seas
by Anders Omstedt, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden

Mounting concern about the influence of humans on climate and environmental conditions has increased the need for multi-disciplinary modeling efforts, including systems such as oceans, costal seas, lakes, land surfaces, ice, rivers and atmosphere.

For more information please see the publishers web site.

Here on Earth: A new beginning
by Tim Flannery

From the book's back cover:
This is a revolutionary dual biography of the planet and of our species. Flannery reimagines the history of earth, from its earliest origins as a chaotic ball of elemental dust and gases to the teeming landscape we currently call home. It is a remarkable story. How did life first emerge here? What forces have shaped it? Why did humans come to dominate? And when did we start to have an impact? More importantly, how has this changed us as a species?

The awesome hand of nature has never been better portrayed than in this book. Nor, remarkably, the transformative power of ideas. From the most intense competition for survival, cooperation has emerged. The challenge we now face is to sustain our fragile hold on life.

For more information see the publishers web site.

Climate Wars: The fight for survival as the World overheats
by Gwynne Dyer

From one of the world’s great geopolitical analysts, a terrifying glimpse of the none-too-distant future, when climate change will force the world’s powers into a desperate struggle for advantage and even survival.

Dwindling resources. Massive population shifts. Natural disasters. Spreading epidemics. Drought. Rising sea levels. Plummeting agricultural yields. Crashing economies. Political extremism. These are some of the expected consequences of runaway climate change in the decades ahead, and any of them could tip the world towards conflict. Prescient, unflinching, and based on exhaustive research and interviews, Climate Wars promises to be one of the most important books of the coming years.

For more information see the publishers web site.

Innovative Corporate Social Responsibility
eds: Prof. Walter Leal Filho (BUP, Germany), Dr Celine Louche (Belgium) and Dr Samuel Idowu (UK)

This book has been listed among the 2010 Top 40 Sustainability Books by the University of Cambridge.

The Sustainable Self
A Personal Approach to Sustainability Education
by Paul Murray

Achieving a sustainable society is the biggest issue of our time. It is not an issue confined to a particular subject area or to certain jobs. It is a way of thinking and behaving that will need to be embedded in all aspects of all of our lives.

The Sustainable Self is the perfect resource for lecturers, trainers, students and professionals of any discipline who need to teach or learn about sustainability. There is widespread agreement that we need to live more sustainable lives. But when up against entrenched habits and everyday obstacles, it can be difficult to turn good intentions into action.

This book presents a complete ‘curriculum’ for effecting a personal transformation towards sustainability, showing you how to align your personal and professional actions with your values and beliefs.

Full of activities that can be done individually or in groups, it is supported by additional resources online including downloadable worksheets and directories of sustainability organisations. Recommended readings at the end of each chapter enable readers to pursue areas of personal or professional interest.

Nature and Sustainability
An Educational Study with Rousseau and Foucault
by Lili-Ann Wolf

The human impact on the natural world is unsustainable, and the tendency to assign education the role of remedying the problem is increasing. However, since sustainability touches fundamentals of human life on many levels, effective education becomes a challenge. This book gives a historical and philosophical view of education that deals with nature and sustainability and highlights the ethical dilemmas that arise if we expect education to be the main promoter of sustainability. Lili-Ann Wolff discusses these issues by drawing from two of the most notable scholars in the Western intellectual tradition, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Michel Foucault. Rousseau's writings offer excellent examples of the role of both ethics and education in dealing with sustainability. And Foucault sets the stage for understanding such fundamental ethical and educational issues as matters of power that act in complex networks on both individual and social levels. The book meets the needs and interests of a diverse audience from educational, environmental and philosophical disciplines, but also many other readers having an interest in contemporary discussions about education, sustainability and nature.

Engineering Education and Sustainable Development
A Guide to Rapid Curriculum Renewal in Higher Education
by Cheryl Desha and Karlson 'Charlie' Hargroves

This book is a practical guide for tertiary education institutions to quickly and effectively renew the curriculum towards education for sustainable development.

The book begins by exploring why curriculum change has been so slow. It then describes a model for rapid curriculum renewal, highlighting the important roles of setting timeframes, formal and informal leadership, and key components and action strategies. The second part of the book provides detailed coverage of six core elements that have been trialled and peer reviewed by institutions around the world:

• raising awareness among staff and students
• mapping graduate attributes
• auditing the curriculum
• developing niche degrees, flagship courses and fully integrated programs
• engaging and catalysing community and student markets
• integrating curriculum with green campus operations

An Introduction to Sustainable Resource Use
by Callum Hill

This book explores the challenges our society faces in making the transition to renewable resource use in a way that is truly sustainable - environmentally, economically and socially.

Suitable for under- and postgraduate courses on environmental limits and resource use, and continuing professional development - particularly resource management, materials, industrial ecology, energy, resource economics and engineering.
 

Tomorrow Today
A book by Irina Bokova that is a mid-decade review of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD).

The DESD mid-decade review presents four main areas of action as laid out in the Strategy for the second half of DESD and the outcomes from the UNESCO World Conference on ESD (Bonn, Germany 2009), namely; enhancing synergies with educational and development initiatives; developing and strengthening capacities for ESD; building, sharing and applying ESD-related knowledge and advocating ESD and increasing awareness and understanding of the importance of sustainability..

The 23rd November 2010, the London-based publisher Earthscan will release new, updated editions of Alan AtKisson’s classic books BELIEVING CASSANDRA and THE SUSTAINABILITY TRANSFORMATION.

The new edition of BELIEVING CASSANDRA includes a stirring new Foreword by Paul Hawken, who calls the book “erudite” and “exceptionally readable” and likens it to a “neurotransmitter” that helps signal the way for forward to a sustainable future. This beautiful new edition also includes fully updated global data, new case studies and examples, as well updates to the memorable anecdotes and diary entries that AtKisson uses to help make sustainability both more personal, and more understandable. The new material in BELIEVING CASSANDRA draws on an additional decade of experience, including work for the United Nations leading up to and including the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009.

In THE SUSTAINABILITY TRANSFORMATION, AtKisson and Earthscan have taken the successful 2008 hardback “The ISIS Agreement” and repackaged it in a beautiful paperback edition, with a new preface, a new cover, and even a new title. THE SUSTAINABILITY TRANSFORMATION has become a widely adopted text in sustainability training programs, and the new preface helps to guide professionals and students — as well as general interest readers — to those parts of the book that they will find most immediately useful. Renowned writer, editor, and climate activist Bill McKibben has called THE SUSTAINABILITY TRANSFORMATION “beyond useful — it’s necessary, rigorous, comprehensive, unsentimental, and yet highly readable, even moving.”

For more information see the AtKisson Group or Earthscan web sites.

Requiem for a Species
Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change
by Clive Hamilton

This book does not set out once more to raise the alarm to encourage us to take radical measures to head off climate chaos. There have been any number of books and reports in recent years explaining just how dire the future looks and how little time we have left to act.

This book is about why we have ignored those warnings, and why it may now be too late. It is a book about the frailties of the human species as expressed in both the institutions we built and the psychological dispositions that have led us on the path of self-destruction. It is about our strange obsessions, our hubris, and our penchant for avoiding the facts. It is the story of a battle within us between the forces that should have caused us to protect the Earth - our capacity to reason and our connection to Nature - and those that, in the end, have won out - our greed, materialism and alienation from Nature. And it is about the 21st century consequences of these failures.

Sustainability Education
Perspectives and Practice across Higher Education
Eds. Paula Jones, David Selby and Stephen Sterling

How do we equip learners with the values, knowledge, skills, and motivation to help achieve economic, social and ecological well-being? How can universities make a major contribution towards a more sustainable future? Amid rising expectations on HE from professional associations, funders, policy makers, and undergraduates, and increasing interest amongst academics and senior management, a growing number of higher education institutions are taking the lead in embracing sustainability. This response does not only include greening the campus but also transforming curricula and teaching and learning.

This book explains why this is necessary and - crucially - how to do it.

Sustainability at Universities - Opportunities, Challenges and Trends
ed. Walter Leal Filho (BSc, PhD, DSc, DL, DPhil, DLitt, FLS FIBiol, FRGS)
Peter Lang Scientific Publishers, New York, December 2009
ISBN 9783631596906, 340 pp.

Sustainability is widely defined as "the ability to meet the needs of the present while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems and without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". However, the goal of managing today's resources so that they may be available to future generations is not easy to reach. Indeed, in order to achieve this ambitious goal, it is important that universities -- similar to other sectors of society- become engaged in the sustainability debate, not superficially as it has largely been the case until now, but in a manner not seen before.

Higher Education and Sustainable Development
Paradox and Possibility
by Stephen Gough and William Scott

This book examines whether it is actually possible to mandate, plan, monitor and evaluate the higher education sector’s route to the production of educated, innovative, independent, self-determining, critical individuals while at the same time achieving a range of wider policy goals on the side. This book examines this question in the context of a particular international policy issue – sustainable development – which is now seen across the globe as a necessary and urgent response to a range of social and environmental issues that threaten the integrity of the biosphere and human well being. The book concludes that the idea of sustainable development holds both opportunities and dangers for universities as they pursue their proper role in a free society.

Environmental Learning

This book is about how school and university students experience and respond to learning activities concerned with environmental issues. While the learning demands associated with sustainable development become ever greater and more complex, our understandings of the nature and dynamics of such learning are in their early infancy. Environmental education and education for sustainable development have become features of many countries’ formal education systems, but very little is known about what such provision looks and feels like for the learners concerned. The aim of this book is to bring learners and their experiences to the centre of current debates about environmental education and education for sustainable development. By exploring the real-time actions, interactions and interpretations of individual learners in various environmental learning situations, we show how insights from research into the student experience can provide powerful pointers for future practice, policy and research. The last 4 decades have seen growing international recognition for the educational dimensions of environmental and sustainable development issues. Since the late 1960s, international statements from organisations such as the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) have called for environmental problems to be tackled through environmental education for all age groups. The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm declared that: ‘education in environmental matters, for the younger generation as well as adults […] is essential’ (United Nation 1972).

Debating Climate Change
by Elizabeth L. Malone

As greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated and contentious voices fill the air, the question gains urgency: How can people with widely varying viewpoints agree to address climate change? Each participant in the debate seems to have a different agenda, from protecting economic growth in developing countries to protecting the energy industry in industrialized countries, from those aghast at the damage done to the Earth to optimists who think we just need to adjust our technological approach.

Debating Climate Change sorts through the tangle of arguments surrounding climate change to find paths to unexpected sites of agreement. Using an innovative sociological approach - combined discourse and social network analyses - Elizabeth L. Malone analyzes 100 documents representing a range of players in this high-stakes debate. Through this she shows how even the most implacable adversaries can find common ground - and how this common ground can be used to build agreement.

Written in a clear, accessible style, this original research and insightful use of communication analysis will help advance understanding and negotiation on climate change throughout the pivotal times to come.

Sustainable Solar Housing

This far-reaching and authoritative two-volume set examines a range of potential solutions for low-energy building design, considering different strategies (energy conservation and renewable energy) and technologies (relating to the building envelope, ventilation, heat delivery, heat production, heat storage, electricity and control). Energy and life-cycle impacts are considered as crucial factors, including passive and active solar use, daylighting and high efficiency conventional heat production. Each volume assesses the potential of these options in a variety of contexts, covering different housing types (apartment, row and detached) in cold, temperate and mild climates. The impressive list of expert authors from 14 countries includes a mix of internationally respected academics and practitioners, working together within the framework of a five-year International Energy Agency (IEA) research project.

Volume 1 presents strategies and solutions, offering the reader a solid basis for developing concepts, considering environmental and economic concerns for housing projects in a variety of contexts.

Volume 2 offers a detailed analysis of exemplary buildings in different European countries and examines the various technologies employed to achieve their remarkable performance. Aided by clear, full colour illustrations, it offers invaluable insights into the application of these technologies.

100% Renewable - Energy Autonomy in Action
ed Peter Droege

The greatest challenge of our time is to build a world based on the sustainable use of renewable power. Our massive dependence on fossil fuels has upset the very climatic system that made human evolution possible. The global economy and its financial system are in jeopardy, running hot on overtly cheap yet increasingly costly and fast depleting oil. A 100% renewable world is seen by many as an impossible dream in anything but the very long term. But not only do a growing number of initiatives and plans dare to make the change but many have already achieved it.

This rich collection presents a series of pioneering efforts and their champions, and the paths to their successes. Ranging from initiatives by individuals to visions for companies, communities and entire countries, it defeats tired economic and technical counter-arguments, showing how the schemes featured not only can and do work but do so economically and with available technology. The book is introduced by incisive writing by Peter Droege, explaining the challenges and framing a roadmap towards a 100% renewable reality.

Sustainability Networks - Cognitive Tools for Expert Collaboration in Social-Ecological Systems
by Janne Hukkinen

Sustainability is a word that means different things depending on who is using it, thus underlining the potential problems involved in experts from different fields teaming up to tackle sustainability problems. In this book, Janne Hukkinen argues for a reflexive approach to sustainability as a means of coming to grips with the threatening challenges arising out of human-environment interaction. The author illustrates his argument with a case study of natural resource management in Lapland, showing how sustainability is understood holistically by academics and professionals alike.

This book reflects an emerging cognitive turn in sustainability sciences, conceptualizing environmental challenges during action on our social and material environments, rather than in isolation. Hukkinen argues that this conceptual blending enables sustainability experts to hybridize themselves: to immerse themselves in the fields of other experts and imagine the other's work - both prerequisites of trans-disciplinary knowledge integration. This book shows how sustainability experts can reveal their intellectual engagements when designing scenarios and indicators and presents a rigorous framework for organizing expert collaboration.

Nätbaserad utbildning - en introduktion
av Stefan Hrastinski

Författaren ger många praktiska tips samtidigt som läsaren uppmuntras till egna reflektioner. Förutom en översikt av aktuella forskningsresultat återges en mängd kortare intervjuer med personer som arbetar med och forskar om nätbaserad utbildning.

The State of the World Atlas

Over 50 full-colour world maps and graphics break down hardcore statistics to provide a compelling analysis of all the political, social, economic and ecological nightmares that keep us awake at night.

• The world's car population has grown five times as fast as the human population ver the last 50 years.
• Wal-Mart's sales revenue exceeds the GDP of 150 countries.
• Climate change may put 2.7 billion at risk of armed conflict.
• Germany generates more tourists than anywhere else.
• Americans use 160 times more water than people in Rwanda.

If you want to get behind the headlines and understand the world - from urbanization to globalization, terrorism to tourism, military spending to human rights - The State of the World Atlas is unmatched.

Perspectives to Global Social Development
ed. Mikko Perkiö

This book is based on a UniPID Virtual Course "Perspectives to Global Social Development" lecture series, coordinated by the University of Tampere. It has been funded by Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland in order to inform the public about development issues. This book concerns human well-being in the global context focusing on the economically less developed regions known as the Global South. Social Development combines a multidisciplinary approach of development studies with concepts of social sciences.

The ISIS Agreement
How Sustainability Can Improve Organizational Performance and Transform the World
by Alan AtKisson

Renowned business and sustainability consultant Alan AtKisson distils decades of wisdom and experience into this highly readable and motivational work. Covering theory and practice, obstacles and opportunities, case studies and poignant personal anecdotes, The ISIS Agreement draws the reader ever deeper into a global 'conspiracy of hope.'

The core of the book is AtKisson's potent Accelerator, adopted for use in dozens of countries by business, governments, and organizations such as UNEP. A comprehensive toolkit that helps integrate sustainability into organizations, initiatives and plans, it can be used by any group, organization, business, community or region, in virtually any context. Central to the Accelerator is the potent ISIS (Indicators, Systems, Innovation, Strategy) method that teaches leaders how to create a whole-systems view of their organization, to identify and understand blockages and opportunities, and to leverage the potential for innovative change that adds value and accelerates progress towards sustainability.

The Skeptical Economist
Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics
By Jonathan Aldred

Economics is unavoidably central to any attempt to improve our quality of life, but most people do not know why, or how to question its underlying assumptions.

The Skeptical Economist rejects the story told by other popular economics books. Responding to Western malaise about quality of life, and a growing curiosity about economics and its relevance to these concerns, Jonathan Aldred argues that economics is not an agreed body of knowledge or an objective science. In reality economics is built on ethical foundations - distinctive and controversial views about how we ought to live, what we value, and why. This revealing and entertaining book exposes these hidden assumptions, and opens up the black box of modern economics to reveal that conventional wisdom is not what it appears to be.

The Skeptical Economist will challenge us all to examine the assumptions behind the economics of our current way of life. It re-discovers the ethics at the heart of economics.

The Ecology of Learning
Sustainability, Lifelong Learning and Everyday Life
by John Blewitt

Your house is flooded by 'unseasonal' heavy rain. What do you learn from this experience? Do you shrug your shoulders and call your insurer? Or do you choose to learn about climate change, switch to renewable energy and lobby politicians? In this insightful book, John Blewitt explores the possibilities for developing a sustainable society through 'lifelong learning' – that is, learning that happens in everyday environments and activities as diverse as shopping, community, 'edutainment', information and communication technology, the internet, broadcasting, people's experience of place and space, green building, social networks and consumer culture.

Drawing on a range of sociological, anthropological and educational studies as well as new research, The Ecology of Learning is ideal for educators, teachers, corporate trainers and consultants working to integrate environmental education, sustainability and innovation in non-traditional learning situations. The coverage is extensive, with an accessible but informed engagement with both theory and practice and a wide range of examples. Throughout, the voices, stories and experiences of many people are used to illustrate the ways people may reshape our understanding of learning and sustainability.

Climate Change and Forests

To date, international attention has focused primarily on the industrial and energy sectors. However, the agriculture, forestry, and land use sector is a major driver of the climate change problem and, thus, must be an integral part of the solution. In this wide-ranging volume, international experts explain the links between climate change and forests, highlighting the potential role of this sector within emerging climate policy frameworks and carbon markets.

After framing forestry activities within the larger context of climate-change policy, the contributors analyze the operation and efficacy of market-based mechanisms for forest conservation and climate change. Drawing on project examples from around the world, the authors present concrete recommendations for policymakers, project developers, and market participants. They discuss sequestration rights in Chile, carbon offset programs in Australia and New Zealand, and emerging policy incentives at all levels of the U.S. government. The book also explores the different voluntary schemes for carbon crediting, provides an overview of carbon accounting best practices, and presents tools for use in future sequestration and offset programs. It concludes by considering a range of incentive options for slowing deforestation and protecting the world’s remaining forests.

Reconciling Human Existence with Ecological Integrity
Science, Ethics, Economics and Law
eds. Laura Westra, Klaus Bosselmann and Richard Westra, with foreword by David Suzuki

Ecosystems have been compared to a house of cards: remove or damage a part and you risk destroying or fundamentally and irreversibly altering the whole. Protecting ecological integrity means maintaining that whole - an aim which is increasingly difficult to achieve given the ever-growing dominance of humanity. This book is the definitive examination of the state of the field now, and the way things may (and must) develop in the future.

Written and edited by members of the Global Ecological Integrity Group - an international collection of the world’s most respected authorities in the area - the book considers the extent to which human rights (such as the rights to food, energy, health, clean air or water) can be reconciled with the principles of ecological integrity. The issue is approached from a variety of economic, legal, ethical and ecological standpoints, providing an essential resource for researchers, students and those in government or business in a wide range of disciplines.

Sustainability Indicators
Measuring the Immeasurable?
by Simon Bell and Stephen Morse
Second Edition

Understanding Sustainable Development
by John Blewitt

The Principles of Sustainability
by Simon Dresner
Second Edition

The Power of Sustainable Thinking
How to Create a Positive Future for the Climate, the Planet, Your Organization and Your Life
by Bob Doppelt with foreword by Hunter Lovins

The future will be powered by sustainable thinking in business, organizations, governments and everyday life.

This revolutionary book tackles climate change, sustainability and life success by starting with your mind. It provides proven ‘staged-based’ methods for transforming thinking and behaviour, beginning first with the reader’s own cognitive patterns, then moving to how individuals can motivate other people to change, and finally to how teams and organizations can be motivated to change.

Understanding Sustainability Economics - Towards Pluralism in Economics
by Peter Söderbaum
August 2008
Hardback, 160 pages, ISBN: 9781844076260

SD & ESD Publishers and Libraries

Earthscan
Publishing for a Sustainable Future

Earthscan is the leading publisher in English on climate change, sustainable development and environmental technology for academic and professional, and also policy and general readers. The aim is to publish original, reliable and significant work that helps to foster the conditions for genuine sustainability by providing the means for understanding and analysing the issues and the tools for resolving them.

Earthscan was originally founded by the International Institute for Environment and Development in 1987, and continue to publish in association with them and in partnership with a range of environmental and development organizations world wide. It is an independent company and the books and journals are distributed throughout the world.

Emerald Group Publishing

Founded in 1967 as an offshoot of the University of Bradford, Emerald Group Publishing has become the world’s leading scholarly publisher of journals and books in business and management with a strong and growing presence in disciplines including LIS, social sciences, engineering, linguistics and audiology.

Greenleaf Publishing

Greenleaf Publishing is a fully independent publisher specialising in corporate responsibility, business ethics, environmental policy and management, future business strategy and practice, and sustainable development.

ESD Sverige - Referenslista aktuell litteratur.

A list on current literature on the teaching of Sustainable Development, mostly in Swedish. The list is maintained by the Swedish WWF.

The University of Cambridge Sustainability Bookshelf.

In 2009, Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, CPSL surveyed its alumni to generate a list of the most noteworthy and influential sustainability books of the last fifty years, a list later published as the The Top 50 Sustainability Books. For The State of Sustainability Leadership 2011 we invited our staff and Senior Associates to identify the most significant books of the past 12 months. In this article, Dr Wayne Visser, CEO of CSR International and Visiting Professor of Social Responsibility at Manheim University, Germany, comments on the new list comparing the emerging themes from 2010 with the earlier Top 50 listing.

Climate Change Reference Guide and Glossary
from State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World
by World Watch Institute

BUP Library of sustainability books

This library contains some books on sustainability, sustainable development and education for sustainable development that we have found interesting.