State of the World 2015: Confronting Hidden Threats to Sustainability
The 2015 edition examines what we think we know about environmental damage and the hidden threats to sustainability we need to recognize.
The 2015 edition examines what we think we know about environmental damage and the hidden threats to sustainability we need to recognize.
In this study the authors offer an analysis of the socio-ecological transformation of Matadepera, a wealthy suburb of metropolitan Barcelona that evolved out of a rural village inhabited by poor peasants who farmed rain-fed cropland and managed the forest.
This article aims to disclose the nature and underlying causes of the recent food crises focusing on both conjunctural and structural factors; to analyze the socio-economic and geopolitical impacts of food price increases; to identify the possible strategies to minimize the trade-off between the increase of agricultural production and the sustainable use of natural resources.
In 1987 the UN’s World Commission for Environment and Development publishes the report “Our Common Future,” also known as the “Brundtland Report.”
Using the Central Coast of California as a case study, this article argues that a nexus of ambitious growers and a growing state agricultural bureaucracy worked to create a “brand name” and teach cultivation approaches with increased production and expanded markets. But these same actors also made efforts to keep the long-term health of the industry and the community in mind.
Taking on the big players in media technology, whose business choices are dictating the changes and transitions in our society and environment, Köpnick questions the economics and ethics behind mobile phone production. He envisions a situation where company strategies are turned around to reduce waste and wastage, and thereby begin to benefit the environment, consumer and company alike.
During the fall of the Soviet Union, a depleted Cuba implements various measures—including sustainable and environmentally sound practices—to avoid devastation.
The article aims to provide a historical perspective on the concept of eco-innovation, its different meanings and its position in the modern debate around sustainability.
The article reflects on how to feed a growing world population in a context of natural resource scarcity and considers the 2012 World Water Day as a means to open an international debate in order to identify strategic choices capable of combining, globally and locally, the objective of food security with that of water resource protection.
Is a world without waste truly achievable? The essays in this volume of RCC Perspectives discuss zero waste as a vision, as a historical concept, and as an international practice. Going beyond the motto of “reduce, reuse, recycle,” they reflect on the feasibility of creating closed material cycles and explore real-world examples of challenges and successes on the way to zero waste.
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