First Published in 2004. Environment, Growth and Development offers a unique analysis of sustainable economic growth and development and the implications for policy and planning at the local, national and global scale.

Environment and Development: Basic Principles, Human Activities, and Environmental Implications focuses on the adverse impact that human activities, developments, and economic growth have on both natural and inhabited environments. The book presents the associated problems, along with solutions that can be used to achieve a harmonic, sustainable development that provides for the co-existence of man and natural life. Chapters provide detailed information on a range of environments including: atmospheric, aquatic, soil, natural, urban, energy, and extraterrestrial, as well as the relationship between the environment and development. In addition, this comprehensive book presents the latest research findings and trends in global environmental policy for each issue. - Offers a discussion of the extraterrestrial environment and waste in earth orbit as one of the distinctive topics of the book - Addresses global environmental policy issues and policies - Presents tabulated data to support the analysis and explain the issues presented - Includes case studies covering many topics of current interest - Analyzes environmental issues and proposes solutions grounded in recent research findings - Discusses the various interpretations of the development concept as well as alternative pathways to sustainable development

This book provides current information on synthesis of plant hormones, how their concentrations are regulated, and how they modulate various plant processes. It details how plants sense and tolerate such factors as drought, salinity, and cold temperature, factors that limit plant productivity on earth. It also explains how plants sense two other environmental signals, light and gravity, and modify their developmental patterns in response to those signals. This book takes the reader from basic concepts to the most up-to-date thinking on these topics. * Provides clear synthesis and review of hormonal and environmental regulation of plant growth and development * Contains more than 600 illustrations supplementary information on techniques and/or related topics of interest * Single-authored text provides uniformity of presentation and integration of the subject matter * References listed alphabetically in each section

Is economic growth good for the environment? A number of economists have claimed that economic growth can benefit the environment, recruiting political support and finance for environmental policy measures. This view has received increasing support since the early 1990s from empirical evidence that has challenged the traditional environmentalist's belief that economic growth degrades the environment. This book reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on growth and the environment, giving an in-depth empirical treatment of the relationship between the two. Various hypotheses are formulated and tested for a number of indicators of environmental pressure. The test results indicate that alternative models and estimation methods should be used, altering previous conclusions about the effect of economic growth on the environment and offering an insight into the forces driving emission reduction in developed countries.

Economic growth, reflected in increases in national output per capita, makes possible an improved material standard of living and the alleviation of poverty. Sustainable development, popularly and concisely defined as ‘meeting the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs,' directly addresses the utilization of natural resources, the state of the environment, and intergenerational equity. Now in its second edition, Economic Growth and Sustainable Development features expanded discussion of income distribution, social capital and the insights of behavioural economics for climate change mitigation. Boxed case studies have been added which explore the impact of economic growth on people and countries in both the developed and developing world. This text addresses the following fundamental questions: What causes economic growth? Why do some countries grow faster than others? What accounts for the extraordinary growth in the world’s population over the past two centuries? What are the current trends in population and will these trends continue? How do we measure sustainable development and is sustainable development compatible with economic growth? Why is climate change the greatest market failure of all time? What can be done to mitigate climate change and global warming? With a blend of formal models, empirical evidence, history and policy, this text provides a coherent and comprehensive treatment of economic growth and sustainable development. It is suitable for those who study development economics, sustainable development and ecological economics.

A succinct examination of the concept of sustainable development: what it means; how it is impacted by globalisation, production and consumption; how it can be measured; and what can be done to promote it.

2007 marked the 20th anniversary of the G.H.Brundtland Commission report that broke new ground by addressing the issue of sustainable development as a means of avoiding an ecological catastrophe. This led to a multitude of political declarations, documents and scientific articles while Agenda 21 – adopted in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro – has been accepted by the governments of more than 100 countries. Sadly, however, this has not prevented certain recent dangerous trends, nor have the wider public, journalists, business circles or politicians grasped the urgency of the problem. It is therefore important to make humanity understand its real place in the natural environment and the gravity of the ecological threat before us. The exclusive role of natural ecosystems is a key factor in the maintenance of the biospheric equilibrium. The current global crisis is largely caused by their dramatic decline by 43% in the past hundred years. Ignoring the immutable laws and limitations which determine the existence of all living things in the biosphere could lead humanity to an ecological catastrophe. This book presents the ecological, demographic, economic and socio-psychological manifestations of the global crisis and outlines the immutable laws and limitations which determine the existence of all living things in the biosphere.

Offering a study of biological, biomedical and biocultural approaches, this book is suitable for researchers, professors and graduate students across the interdisciplinary area of human development. It is presented in the form of lectures to facilitate student programming.

Developing countries need to design projects to increase the growth and wellness of its human population, which involves the inclusion of topics associated directly with the sustainable development of these countries and their particular social problems. This book examines the interrelations between development, growth, the environment and inequality, especially in developing countries and taking into account qualitative and quantitative approaches. Increasing welfare of the population is important to the increase of human development through the improvement of developmental and environmental conditions, generating sustainable development where it is key to seek changes in public policies, economic, technological and social factors. This book aims to analyse different contexts from micro to macro level relationships between development, growth, inequality, environment and human development, and evaluate what the actual conditions in emerging economies are and how developing new strategies could improve the well-being of developing countries. The book is organised as follows: Saiz-Alvarez and Gamez identify the main components to propose an entrepreneurship model that includes distance, education, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) as alternatives to generate wealth and development in developing countries. In Chapter Two, Cutolo etal. describes an approach to current situations of water vulnerability in watersheds of metropolitan regions in tropical countries of South America, and the importance to improve the strategies to promote environmental health in these regions. In Chapter Three, Hashim shows a comparison from a historical point of view between two crops, one of them native to South America (quinoa) and the other from Africa (pearl millet). The comparison leads to the questions of whether or not reflexions consider pearl millet as an alternative to food security in African countries and as an incentive for women farmers. In Chapter Four, Palmer and Correa applied three groundwater indicators: a groundwater extraction indicator, a groundwater extraction for public supply per capita indicator and a groundwater vulnerability indicator to describe the different characteristics of the environment and propose this analysis as a tool to make decisions in environmental management within the Cove Basin at the Island of San Andrés (Colombia). Correa in Chapter Five analyses and assesses the impact that poverty and access to water have on labor productivity of the economically active population in Colombia. In Chapter Six, Daronco and Wartchow clarify how the Brazilian policies about water resources have been based on the laws developed at the time of discovery in 1500. Additionally, it regards the culminating active level in the National Water Resources System (NWRS) today. Finally, Castellanos conducts a search and reflection of bioethical dilemmas in veterinary medicine, identifying sources of stress and coping strategies in Chapter Seven.

A key area of public policy in the last twenty years is the question of how, and how much, to protect vthe environment. At the heart of this has been the heated debate over the nature of the relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability. Is environemental sustainability economic growth or `green growth', a contradiction in terms? Avoiding the confusion that often surrounds these issues, Ekins provides rigorous expositions of the concept of sustainability, integrated environmental and economic accounting, the Environmental Kuznets Curve, the economics of climate change and environmental taxation. Individual chapters are organised as self-contained, state-of-the-art expositions of the core issues of environmental economics, with extensive cross-referencing from one chapter to another, in order to guide the student or policy-maker through these complex problems. Paul Ekins breaks new ground in defining the conditions of compatibility between economic growth and environmental sustainability, and provides measures and criteria by which the environmental sustainability of economic growth, as it occurs in the real world, may be judged. It is argued that `green growth' is not only theoretically possible but economically achievable and the authors show what environmental and economic policies are required to achieve this. Economic Growth and Environmental Sustainability will be welcolmed by students of and researchers in environmental economics and environmental studies, as well as all interested policy-makers.