ABSTRACT

This Handbook gives a comprehensive, international and cutting-edge overview of Sustainable Development. It integrates the key imperatives of sustainable development, namely institutional, environmental, social and economic, and calls for greater participation, social cohesion, justice and democracy as well as limited throughput of materials and energy. The nature of sustainable development and the book’s theorization of the concept underline the need for interdisciplinarity in the discourse as exemplified in each chapter of this volume.

The Handbook employs a critical framework that problematises the concept of sustainable development and the struggle between discursivity and control that has characterised the debate. It provides original contributions from international experts coming from a variety of disciplines and regions, including the Global South.

Comprehensive in scope, it covers, amongst other areas:

  • Sustainable architecture and design
  • Biodiversity
  • Sustainable business 
  • Climate change
  • Conservation
  • Sustainable consumption
  • De-growth
  • Disaster management
  • Eco-system services
  • Education
  • Environmental justice
  • Food and sustainable development
  • Governance
  • Gender
  • Health
  • Indicators for sustainable development
  • Indigenous perspectives
  • Urban transport

The Handbook offers researchers and students in the field of sustainable development invaluable insights into a contested concept and the alternative worldviews that it has fostered. 

part |38 pages

History and evolution of the concept of sustainable development

chapter |36 pages

Sustainable Development

History and evolution of the concept

part |81 pages

Institutional dimensions of sustainable development

chapter |19 pages

Global Change, Islands and Sustainable Development

Islands of sustainability or analogues of the challenge of sustainable development?

chapter |15 pages

‘Uncertainty' In the Professionalisation of Sustainable Development

The case of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

chapter |16 pages

Population Health

A fundamental marker of sustainable development

chapter |15 pages

Education for Sustainable Development

Challenges of a critical pedagogy

part |71 pages

Social dimensions of sustainable development

part |85 pages

Economic dimensions of sustainable development

chapter |14 pages

Sustainable Business

A critique of corporate social responsibility policies and practices

chapter |13 pages

China's Transition to Sustainability

Which direction to take?