Global consumption continues to generate growth in mining. In lesser developed economies, this growth offers the potential to generate new resources for development, but also creates challenges to sustainability in the regions in which extraction occurs. This context leads to debate on the institutional arrangements most likely to build synergies between mining, livelihoods, and development, an...

agricultural sustainability refers to the ability of a cropping system to produce, without causing irreversible damage tothe ecosystem. there is an increasing need to view cropping systems and identify management practices in a holisticindicator-based impact assessment. the main objective of this study was to compare and rank the cropping systems of themarvdasht plain in fars province; in order...

This paper addresses an important challenge for future earth system governance: how to ensure that governance norms that emerge from inter-state negotiations foster equity and sustainability at all levels from the local to the global. I look back on two decades of global climate change governance to clarify how norms can structure access to global public goods and the allocation of responsibili...

The unsustainable harvest of wildlife is a major threat to global biodiversity and to the millions of people who depend on wildlife for food and income. Past research has called attention to the fact that commonly used methods to evaluate the sustainability of wildlife hunting perform poorly, yet these methods remain in popular use today. Here, we conduct a systematic review of empirical sustai...

Global sustainability strategies require assessing whether countries' development trajectories are sustainable over time. However, sustainability assessments are limited because losses of natural capital and its ecosystem services through deforestation have not been comprehensively incorporated into national accounts. We update the national accounts of 80 nations that underwent tropical defores...

1 Sustainability Science Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, 2 Harvard Initiative for Global Health, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, 3 Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America, 4 Global Health Initiative, Boston Un...

eco village design is a new field of knowledge still under development. it will be the physical manifestation of the unfolding of the ecovillage dream held by so many. it is generally agreed that concept of sustainability should play an increasing role in future urban development world-wide. in order to ensure ecological sustainability, cities around the world have to decrease their environment...

the issue of sustainable development has been widely acknowledged and spread rapidly after united nations conference on environment and development in rio in 1992. considerable attention is given to urban settlement areas. thus, role of urban development is seen as a challenging issue under circumstances. outcomes of the current patterns of world population growth and industrial development are...

Food chain sustainability assessment is challenging on several grounds. Handling knowledge and information on sustainability performance and coping with the diversity of visions around “what counts as sustainable food” are two key issues addressed by this study. By developing a comparative case study on local, regional and global wheat-to-bread chains, and confronting the multidimensionality of...

The measure of value called emergy is used to evaluate the flows of energy and resources that sustain the biosphere including the economy of humans. A donor system of value based on solar emergy required to produce things is suggested as the only means of reversing the logic trap inherent in economic valuation, which suggests that value stems only from utilization by humans. The stocks of natur...