With population growth, increasing water demands and climate change the need to understand the current and future pathways to water security is becoming more pressing. To contribute to addressing this challenge, we examine the link between water stress and society through socio-hydrological modeling. We conceptualize the interactions between an agricultural society with its environment in a sty...

Global trends including population growth, changing diets and consumption patterns, urbanisation and climate change will exert increasing pressure on supplies of food and other products of ecosystems. Many experts predict that food production will need to increase by up to 100 per cent over the next forty years and some suggest that this can only be achieved through intensification of current i...

Geological records on earth are largely set in stone, or at least the distinctive fossils to be found in different layers of rock. The geological time scale also tends to span millions of years though more recently they have comprised mere millennia, with the most recent epoch, the Holocene, traced back to have begun just 11,700 years ago at the end of the last ice age. But geologists are now c...

This article sets out to examine the perceptions regarding the sustainability of organizations within the Nelson Mandela Bay region in South Africa. The integration of economic, social and environmental performance seems to be an obstacle to many organizations. Not many organizations pursue a sustainability agenda full-on and lack a vision of sustainability, thus needing appropriate change stra...

Human population density in the coastal zone and potential impacts of climate change underscore a growing conflict between coastal development and an encroaching shoreline. Rising sea-levels and increased storminess threaten to accelerate coastal erosion, while growing demand for coastal real estate encourages more spending to hold back the sea in spite of the shrinking federal budget for beach...

Polylepis woodlands, the dominant high-elevation woodland species of the Andes of South America, are an increasingly important focus of conservation and restoration efforts as a buffer to the regional effects of climate change. However, the natural extent of these woodlands before the arrival of human populations is still debated. One significant approach to this question is an assessment of th...

Montane regions worldwide have experienced relatively low plant invasion rates, a trend attributed to increased climatic severity, low rates of disturbance, and reduced propagule pressure relative to lowlands. Manipulative experiments at elevations above the invasive range of non-native species can clarify the relative contributions of these mechanisms to montane invasion resistance, yet such e...

In this paper we develop an economic growth model that includes anthropogenic climate change. We include a publicly funded research sector that creates new technologies and simultaneously expands the productivities of existing technologies. The environment is affected by R&D activities both negatively, through the increase of output from productivity growth, as well as positively as new technol...

Livestock production is an important contributor to sustainable food security for many nations, particularly in low-income areas and marginal habitats that are unsuitable for crop production. Animal products account for approximately one-third of global human protein consumption. Here, a range of indicators, derived from FAOSTAT and World Bank statistics, are used to model the relative vulnerab...

The Human Development Report 2007/2008 about climate change and development made bold arguments concerning human rights and justice for poor and disadvantaged populations. However, its policy proposals were less bold, looking very similar to those of the World Bank's World Development Report 2010. This article investigates in which direction the thinking on environment and sustainability by UND...