Author: James Gustave Speth
Publisher: Orient Longman
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 314
ISBN/UPC (if available): 978-81-250-2740-9
Description
This book will change the way we understand the future of our planet. It is both alarming and hopeful. James Gustave Speth, renowned as a visionary environmentalist leader, warns that in spite of all the international negotiations and agreements of the past two decades, efforts to protect Earth’s environment are not succeeding. Still, he says, the challenges are not insurmountable. He offers comprehensive, viable new strategies for dealing with environmental threats around the world.
The author explains why current approaches to critical global environmental problems-climate change, biodiversity loss, deterioration of marine environments, deforestation, water shortages, and others-don’t work now and won’t work in the future. He provides a stinging critique of the failure of U S leadership and offers intriguing insights into why the U S has been able to address domestic environmental threats with some success while largely failing at the international level. Setting forth eight specific steps to a sustainable future, Speth convincingly argues that dramatically different and far-reaching actions by citizens and governments are now urgent. If ever a book could be described as essential, this is it.
Contents
PREFACE
PROLOGUE: 1980
PART ONE: ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES GO GLOBAL
A World of Wounds
Lost in Eden
Pollution and Climate Change in a Full World
PART TWO: AND THE WORLD RESPONDS
First Attempt at Global Environmental Governance
Anatomy of Failure
PART THREE: FACING UP TO UNDERLYING CAUSES
Ten Drivers of Environmental Deterioration
Globalization and the Environment
PART FOUR: THE TRANSITION TO SUSTAINABILITY
Attacking the Root Causes
Taking Good Governance Seriously
The Most Fundamental Transition of All
Resources for Citizens
List of Abbreviations
Notes
For Further Reading: A Bookshelf
Index