Local Consumption and Global Environmental Impacts PDF Download

Author: Kuishuang Feng
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317577280
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
This book describes how local consumption, particularly in urban areas, is increasingly met by global supply chains. These supply chains often extend over large geographical distances and have greater global environmental impacts, contributing to pollution, climate change, water scarcity, and deforestation. As consumption is increasingly met by globalized supply chains, causing social, economic, and environmental impacts elsewhere, consumption decisions can unknowingly contribute and reinforce global inequality and exploitation. To account for the impacts of consumption and distribution of wealth we need to analyze global supply and value chains. In this volume, the authors provide an overview of key methods of analysis, including Multi-Regional Input-Output analysis and Life Cycle Assessment. Subsequent chapters connect local consumption to the global consequences of different environmental issues, such as water and land use and stress, greenhouse gases emissions, and other forms of air pollution. Each issue is addressed in an individual chapter, including case studies from China, U.S. and UK. The book will be key reading for students taking courses in environmental sciences, sustainability sciences, ecological economies, and geography.

Author: UN Environment
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108707661
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 744

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Book Description
Published to coincide with the Fourth United Nations Environmental Assembly, UN Environment's sixth Global Environment Outlook calls on decision makers to take bold and urgent action to address pressing environmental issues in order to protect the planet and human health. By bringing together hundreds of scientists, peer reviewers and collaborating institutions and partners, the GEO reports build on sound scientific knowledge to provide governments, local authorities, businesses and individual citizens with the information needed to guide societies to a truly sustainable world by 2050. GEO-6 outlines the current state of the environment, illustrates possible future environmental trends and analyses the effectiveness of policies. This flagship report shows how governments can put us on the path to a truly sustainable future - emphasising that urgent and inclusive action is needed to achieve a healthy planet with healthy people. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309044944
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Global environmental change often seems to be the most carefully examined issue of our time. Yet understanding the human sideâ€"human causes of and responses to environmental changeâ€"has not yet received sustained attention. Global Environmental Change offers a strategy for combining the efforts of natural and social scientists to better understand how our actions influence global change and how global change influences us. The volume is accessible to the nonscientist and provides a wide range of examples and case studies. It explores how the attitudes and actions of individuals, governments, and organizations intertwine to leave their mark on the health of the planet. The book focuses on establishing a framework for this new field of study, identifying problems that must be overcome if we are to deepen our understanding of the human dimensions of global change, presenting conclusions and recommendations.

Author: Peter Dauvergne
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262514923
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
An environmentalist maps the hidden costs of overconsumption in a globalized world by tracing the environmental consequences of five commodities. The Shadows of Consumption gives a hard-hitting diagnosis: many of the earth's ecosystems and billions of its people are at risk from the consequences of rising consumption. Products ranging from cars to hamburgers offer conveniences and pleasures; but, as Peter Dauvergne makes clear, global political and economic processes displace the real costs of consumer goods into distant ecosystems, communities, and timelines, tipping into crisis people and places without the power to resist. In The Shadows of Consumption, Peter Dauvergne maps the costs of consumption that remain hidden in the shadows cast by globalized corporations, trade, and finance. Dauvergne traces the environmental consequences of five commodities: automobiles, gasoline, refrigerators, beef, and harp seals. In these fascinating histories we learn, for example, that American officials ignored warnings about the dangers of lead in gasoline in the 1920s; why China is now a leading producer of CFC-free refrigerators; and how activists were able to stop Canada's commercial seal hunt in the 1980s (but are unable to do so now). Dauvergne's innovative analysis allows us to see why so many efforts to manage the global environment are failing even as environmentalism is slowly strengthening. He proposes a guiding principle of “balanced consumption” for both consumers and corporations. We know that we can make things better by driving a high-mileage car, eating locally grown food, and buying energy-efficient appliances; but these improvements are incremental, local, and insufficient. More crucial than our individual efforts to reuse and recycle will be reforms in the global political economy to reduce the inequalities of consumption and correct the imbalance between growing economies and environmental sustainability.

Author: Raghbendra Jha
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134227337
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
With globalization fast becoming an irreversible process, it is necessary to pay increased attention to the implications for environmental sustainability. However, the so-called environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) argument implies that rapid economic growth in many developing countries should be environmentally unsustainable. Environmental Sustainability addresses this dichotomy and articulates a notion of consumption sustainability that is both universal and pertains to the indefinite future. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of addressing a broad spectrum of sources of environmental degradation and relates this measure to an index of economic achievement more complete than per capita income. As well as the EKC, authors Jha and Murthy also critique the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) and empirically substantiate the proposition that a certain type of development in the presently high-income countries is primarily responsible for global environmental degradation. Several policy conclusions for global environmental management are also advanced. Throughout, Jha and Murthy comprehensively evaluate existing approaches to environmental sustainability and critically review empirical studies of environmental degradation, and economic development, making this an invaluable source of information for those concerned with environmental economics and political economy.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309184444
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 99

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Book Description
This publication is extracted from a much larger report, Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade, which addresses the full range of the scientific issues concerning global environmental change and offers guidance to the scientific effort on these issues in the United States. This volume consists of Chapter 7 of that report, "Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change," which was written for the report by the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change of the National Research Council (NRC). It provides findings and conclusions on the key scientific questions in human dimensions research, the lessons that have been learned over the past decade, and the research imperatives for global change research funded from the United States.

Author: David Gibbs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134703813
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
This book focuses upon the potential to integrate economic and environmental policies at the local and regional scale. Local initiatives are investigated within their wider economic and environmental policy contexts in order to illustrate both the constraints and opportunities for local policy makers. Attention is given to global economic trends, as well as to the specific policy contexts of the European Union and the national contexts of the UK, USA, Australia, Japan and Sweden. The key principles for designing integrative policies and descriptions of initiatives and projects in a variety of locations are also considered.

Author: Ingemar Elander
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134661118
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This book is about cities as engines of consumption of the world's environment, and the spread of policies to reduce their impact. It looks at these issues by examining the impact of the Rio Declaration and assesses the extent to which it has made a difference. Consuming Cities examines this impact using case studies from around the world including: the USA, Japan, Germany, the UK, China, India, Sweden, Poland, Australia and Indonesia The contributors all have direct experience of the urban environment and urban policies in the countries on which they write and offer an authoritative commentary which brings the urban 'consumption' dimension of sustainable development into focus.

Author: Norman Myers
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 9781597267861
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
While overconsumption by the developed world's roughly one billion inhabitants is an abiding problem, another one billion increasingly affluent "new consumers" in developing countries will place additional strains on the earth's resources, argue authors Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent in this important new book. The New Consumers examines the environmental impacts of this increased consumption, with particular focus on two commodities -- cars and meat -- that stand to have the most far-reaching effects. It analyzes consumption patterns in a number of different countries, with special emphasis on China and India (whose surging economies, as well as their large populations, are likely to account for exceptional growth in humanity's ecological footprint), and surveys big-picture issues such as the globalization of economies, consumer goods, and lifestyles. Ultimately, according to the orman Myers and Jennifer Kent, the challenge will be for all of humanity to transition to sustainable levels of consumption, for it is unrealistic to expect "new" consumers not to aspire to be like the "old" ones. Cogent in its analysis, The New Consumers issues a timely warning of a major and developing environmental trend, and suggests valuable strategies for ameliorating its effects.

Author: Nicholas Low
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415187695
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This book is about cities as engines of consumption of the world's environment. It examines these issues through the impact of the Rio Declaration and assesses the extent to which it has made a difference.