Top Research Papers on Environmental Sustainability

In this issue of State and Local Government Review’s Government Matters Section, two articles examine the implementation of energy sustainability programs. One article examines how state capacity affected the plans of the U.S. government to fund state energy programs under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The other article examines local-level citizen participation in environmental issues both in the United States and in Kyrgyzstan. The two essays are complementary; they examine different levels of government and different countries. The ARRA article presents an analysis usin...

BIOL 150 The World of Plants (B2, B3, ES) 3 BIOL 160 Marine Biology (B2, ES) 3 BIOL 170 Animal Diversity (B2, ES) 3 BIOL 300 Nature Study (UD-B, ES) 3 BIOL 310 Biology for Today's World (UD-B, ES) 3 BIOL 318 Our Endangered Planet (UD-B, LLD, AERM, ES, GP) 3 C W 508 Introduction to Environmental Literature (UD-C, ES) 3 CFS 543 Sustainability in the Textile, Housing, and Food Industries (UD-D, ES) 3

This paper reflects on the extensive literature on environmental sustainability that has been produced over the last two decades, and proposes a new approach for environmental policy that goes beyond the cost-benefit analysis that has proved so difficult to implement for non-marginal environmental issues. This approach combines the Safe Minimum Standard approach, which was proposed many years ago, with the concepts of environmental functions and ecosystem goods and services, which have been developed much more recently. It is shown that this approach provides the basis for a robust calculation...

A growing number of companies globally are now identifying the significance of sustaining the natural environment. The implementation of environment interventions is a mixed bag of achievements, slow progress and a lack of progress. Whereas, the progress on the policy and legal fronts is at the acceptable level, the environmental conditions in the country have not changed much to the better. The importance of environmental sustainability to development was captured in MDG 7. Despite some progress towards meeting this goal, there is still substantial unfinished business and new global and local...

Pervasive computing naturally lends itself to many of environmental sustainability's core challenges and is well-aligned with pervasive computing's vision, which promises to deliver computational intelligence embedded in the physical world, human enterprises, and people's lives.

This article investigates the driving forces of the ecological footprint (EF) and its six subcomponents to examine similarities in sources using a cross-national data set of more than 100 countries. Expectations from environmental impact, world-systems, and world-polity perspectives are incorporated in a model examining the institutional-level attributes driving national-level imprints on the biophysical environment. Results suggest that the structural factors driving ecological footprints differ across the EF's subcomponents and are similar for only one of its pieces, carbon uptake. Specifyin...

This book summarizes current research in marine biology, ecology and evolution, and ecology and Evolution of Marine Systems II and discusses the role of text-based learning in the development of science.

Zoe Halfacree, Soft Tissue Surgeon at Davies Veterinary Specialists and Chair of the greener veterinary practice working group, Vet Sustain, focuses on environmental sustainability, including climate change, loss of biodiversity, plastic pollution and resource scarcity and explains what steps your practice can take to reduce your carbon footprint for a brighter, more considerate sustainable future.

Concern about the environmental impact of human activities is ever increasing and several efforts have been initiated globally to reduce energy consumption and to increase energy efficiency. At a European level, a number of initiatives exist under the "Energy 2020" label which identifies the energy priorities for the period up to 2020. In December 2008 the European Council and Parliament adopted the Climate and Energy Package that reinforces Europe’s commitment to: • A reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions of at least 20% below 1990 levels • Source 20% of EU energy from renewable resources ...

The BSAVA has recently formed a new ‘Sustainability Working Group’ (SWG) of interested BSAVA volunteers and staff members. The initial purpose of the SWG is to explore the feasibility of BSAVA becoming carbon neutral as an organization, both at the Association’s HQ (Woodrow House) and Association-wide. Read on to find out more.

Sustainability: I like to get a 30,000ft vision of sustainability from the Brundtland reports's definition which includes 'looking after the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to look after themselves'. Somewhere between the extremes of short term profits or Net Present Value cost benefit analysis and only considering the protection of natural ecosystems as they are or some consider they should be, there is the life styles you and I and future generations think we need, and what's more probably think we have a right to.

Current approaches to teaching sustainability in undergraduate engineering programs tend to focus on the environmental pillar of sustainable practice, while de-emphasizing social and economic pillars. Yet, social, economic, and environmental pillars are considered equally important pieces of expert, global perspectives on sustainable development. This study complements previous qualitative studies by showing that this emphasis on the environmental is not only a distinct characteristic of sustainability education in engineering but also exemplifies the preconceptions that engineering students h...

This paper will throw some light on the strategies adopted by IT companies for environmental sustainability, few suggestions towards green computing and finally a proposal on how the education sector can reduce its carbon footprint by using the strategies mentioned in the paper.

Sustainability is the buzzword of our time. Everyone from policymakers, to urban planners and retail executives seem to have adopted the term. It is the in-vogue prefix for anything from corporate environmental reports to travel agents’ package-tour promotions. To paraphrase economist Milton Friedman, we are all committed to sustainable development now. But what may be an advertiser’s dream can be a local authority’s nightmare. Is the concern with sustainability just a passing fad? Or does it signify an emergent cultural revolution? Do we all mean the same thing by sustainability or sustainabl...

Of the different forms of life that have inhabited the Earth in its three to four billion year history, 99.9% are now extinct. Against this backdrop, the human enterprise with its roughly 200,000-year history barely merits attention. As the American novelist Mark Twain once remarked, if our planet’s history were to be compared to the Eiffel Tower, human history would be a mere smear on the very tip of the tower. But while modern humans (Homo sapiens) might be insignificant in geologic time, we are by no means insignificant in terms of our recent planetary impact. A 1986 study estimated that 40...

Many central concerns of social economics, such as embeddedness, plural values and social justice, are highly pertinent to environment and sustainability. Somewhat paradoxically, there has been relatively little research on environment and sustainability in the core social-economics research community. But this is not to say that social-economics research on the environment and sustainability does not exist. This research has just been mostly carried out by scholars identifying themselves with ecological economics or political ecology. Our chapter sets this scholarship in its broader context a...

Find a pool, recreation reserve, walking track, skate park or nature reserve in South Gippsland.

Ellie V. Pullin Preschool is committed to: • promoting respect for, and an appreciation of, the natural environment among all at Ellie V Pullin Preschool • fostering children’s capacity to understand and respect the natural environment, and the interdependence between people, plants, animals and the land • supporting the development of positive attitudes and values in line with sustainable practices • ensuring that educators and other staff engage in sustainable practices during the operation of Ellie V Pullin Preschool.

This paper reviews the current status of the debate about the concept of environmental sustainability and discusses related aspects of growth, limits, scale, and substitutability.

Discussion on environmental sustainability in the past two decades has often engendered more controversy than agreement. The Beijing Olympics in 2008 and 2022 are examples of state bureaucrats and international media outlets upholding polarized viewpoints on achieving carbon neutrality. The “original ecology” folk song of 21st-century China further demonstrates how anthropocentric interests could easily divert people’s attention away from issues critical to planetary wellness.