Sustainability unpacked : food, energy and water for resilient environments and societies / Kristiina A. Vogt ... [et al.].

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Food, water and energy form some of the basic elements of sustainability considerations. This ground-breaking book examines and decodes these elements, exploring how a range of countries make decisions regarding their energy and bio-resource consumption and procurement. The authors consider how these choices impact not only the societies and environments of those countries, but the world in general.To achieve this, the authors review the merits of various sustainability and environmental metrics, and then apply these to 34 countries that are ranked low, medium or high on the human development index. The book assesses their resource capacities and the environmental impacts, both within and outside their country boundaries, from consuming food, water, and energy. The final section uses the lessons derived from the earlier analyses of resource consumption to explore the importance of geography, climates and sustainable management of forests and other natural resources for building resilient societies in the future.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Authors and Contributors (p. ix)
• Preface (p. xv)
• List of Figures and Tables (p. xix)
• Part I From the Beginning
• 1 Sustainability - Clues for Positive Societal and Ecosystem Change (p. 3)
• Defining Sustainability (p. 3)
• Why Sustainability Needs to be Unpacked (p. 4)
• Decoding Our Current Perceptions of Sustainability and Is There a Right Model? (p. 8)
• Large Datasets and Moving Beyond Irrational Human Choices (p. 10)
• Using Human Development Ranking to Understand Large Datasets (p. 17)
• 2 Learning From the PAST: Why Societies Collapsed or Survived (p. 21)
• Why People Live Where They Do (p. 21)
• Where is it easier for humans to live within their footprints? (p. 22)
• Where is it difficult for humans to live within their footprints? (p. 24)
• Industrialization Fuelled by Carbon (p. 28)
• A history of how society became dependent on 'artificial' products made from fossil carbon (p. 29)
• Agrarian societies are dependent on renewable carbon (p. 30)
• The 'carbonization' of society and the importance of coal (p. 31)
• Oil made our 'synthetic' world possible (p. 34)
• The Norm: Transboundary Consumption of Someone Else's Resources (p. 36)
• Human History: A Search for Food Security (p. 39)
• Food and social status (p. 42)
• Food preservation for food security (p. 44)
• Restaurants and our perceptions of food security (p. 46)
• A Long Human History of Poor Health (p. 48)
• Accidental Reductions in Human Resource Uses (p. 50)
• Part 2 Scientific Approach to Decoding Sustainability
• 3 TODAY: Decoding Country Resource Stories (p. 59)
• Indices and How they Characterize Sustainable Choices (p. 59)
• Indices rank environmental/ecological metrics well (p. 59)
• Human and resource capital disconnect (p. 65)
• Indices and Advanced-Economy Countries (p. 67)
• Indices and Emerging-Economy Countries (p. 69)
• Indices and Growing-Economy Countries (p. 70)
• Lessons Learnt From Indices (p. 72)
• Part 3 The Real Country Stories
• 4 Fossil Energy Endowments and Externalities (p. 81)
• CO 2 Emissions Link to Energy (p. 81)
• CO 2 emissions and total fossil fuel consumption (p. 81)
• CO 2 emissions and gasoline consumption (p. 84)
• Societies and Fossil Energy Options (p. 86)
• Diverse fossil energy portfolios the norm (p. 86)
• Energy security after becoming a net importer of oil (p. 88)
• Energy Production Is Water Demanding (p. 91)
• 5 Forests - The Backbone and Circulatory System for Human Societies (p. 97)
• Where do you Find Forests Today? (p. 98)
• Energy Choices and Satisfying Human Survival Needs (p. 100)
• Forests and Fossil Energies: Incompatible in a Conservation and Sustainable Development World? (p. 104)
• CO 2 Emissions, Land Use Changes and Forest Sequestration of Carbon (p. 109)
• Liquid Fuels from Forests to Mitigate CO 2 Emissions (p. 114)
• Environmental challenges to biofuels (p. 116)
• Forest energy and sustainability from distributed energy production (p. 120)
• Forest Uses have Negative Environmental Repercussions Elsewhere (p. 123)
• 6 The Soil and Water Connection to Food: Adapt, Mitigate or Die (p. 129)
• What Constrains Local Food Production? (p. 129)
• Soil chemistry - sets the threshold for food production (p. 130)
• Severely degraded lands and food production (p. 132)
• Water Security and Soils (p. 134)
• Part 4 Climate and Soils: Unavoidable Constraints to Solar Capital
• 7 The Future: Climate Change as a Global Driver Impacting Sustainability (p. 143)
• Why People Migrate: Geography and Climate Influences on Humans (p. 145)
• Past human responses to changing climates: Become a foreigner (p. 145)
• Climate Change and Humans (p. 147)
• Climate change and social dysfunctions (p. 151)
• Climate change and human health (p. 152)
• Water and Resources (p. 154)
• Water supplies and human development (p. 154)
• Droughts and bio-resource securities (p. 156)
• Water and electricity production (p. 160)
• 8 Where the Past and Future Meet: Soils or the Unseen Earth That Nurtures Societies (p. 165)
• Soil Management Essential for Human Development (p. 168)
• Soils Are Not Equally Good for Food Production (p. 171)
• Soils are quite diverse and only some are good for growing crops (p. 171)
• Good soils, good crops and good food security (p. 174)
• Soil Degradation and Food Security (p. 176)
• Soil degradation and global soils (p. 176)
• Linking soil degradation to societal sustainability (p. 177)
• Your Health Is Dictated by Where Your Food Is Grown (p. 180)
• Nutrient deficiencies in food and human health problems (p. 180)
• Human health, agriculture and nutrient deficiencies: the soil connection (p. 183)
• Wildlife and nutrient deficiencies: eating soils (p. 185)
• Forests Buffer Societies Living on Nutrient-Poor Soils (p. 186)
• Forests grow well on poor soils (p. 186)
• Trees are better adapted than humans to the environment and climates (p. 188)
• 9 The Ultimate Constraint to Human Sustainability: Solar Income (p. 197)
• Productive Capacity Potentials and Human Survival (p. 198)
• Solar Income Equates to Sustainable Choices (p. 200)
• Losses From and Unavailable Solar Income: A Forest Lens (p. 203)
• Is Local Food Production Sustainable? The Solar Income Factor (p. 205)
• Part 5 Societies Adapt to a Quagmire of Resource Choices
• 10 Debunking Sustainability Myths (p. 213)
• Temperature and Where You Live Do Matter (p. 215)
• Do High Population Densities Equate to Unsustainable Choices? (p. 220)
• Rural Landscapes: Rich in Resources and Rich People? (p. 223)
• Is it Realistic to Expect a Low Carbon-use World to Reduce CO 2 Emissions? (p. 230)
• Economic development and fossil carbon (p. 230)
• The carbon backbone of society (p. 232)
• Food Security Solution: Do We Need Another Green Revolution? (p. 237)
• 11 Portfolio for Managing Natural and Human Capital (p. 243)
• Developing Human Capital (p. 245)
• Communication technologies (p. 245)
• Make the whole society adaptable: Educate females (p. 246)
• Being Adaptive Means Being Global and Importing Bio-resources (p. 249)
• Agriculture and forests: important import products (p. 251)
• A diverse fossil fuel importation imperative for development (p. 254)
• Valuing Labour as a Resource (p. 258)
• 12 Sustainable Ecosystems: Investments in Human and Natural Capital (p. 261)
• Cell Matrix of Resource Endowments and Human Adaptability (p. 263)
• Agricultural land endowment and social resilience (p. 264)
• Oil endowment and social resilience (p. 266)
• Forest and woodland endowment and social resilience (p. 267)
• Water endowment and social resilience (p. 268)
• Climate and soil constraints to natural and social capital (p. 269)
• The Fulcrum of Sustainability (p. 271)
• Climate change mitigation (p. 273)
• Importing resources (p. 276)
• Final Thoughts on Sustainability Unpacked (p. 278)
• Index (p. 287)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Kristiina A. Vogt is a professor of ecosystem management and founder (and co-co-ordinator) of the Forest Systems and Bioenergy program at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Toral Patel-Weynand is an Affiliate Associate Faculty at the University of Washington (UW) and an Associate of the Forest Systems and Bioenergy, UW. Maura Shelton is a Research Associate with the Forest Systems and Bioenergy in the College of Forest Resources at the University of Washington. Daniel J. Vogt, Associate Professor in Soils and Ecosystem Ecology of the College of Forest Resources, came to the University of Washington in July 2000 from Yale University. John C. Gordon is Chairman of Interforest, LLC, a sustainable forestry consulting firm, and a founder of the Candlewood Timber Group, Inc., a sustainable forestry company with forestland and operations in Argentina. Calvin T. Mukumoto is the President of Renewol LLC, a start-up company producing a mobile methanol generator to use low quality wood and cellulosic wastes, and the Chief financial Officer for TSS Consultants. Asep S. Suntana is a Research Associate in the Forest Systems and Bioenergy program at the University of Washington. Patricia A. Roads is the Communications Director for the Center for Adaptive Policies in Ecosystems International, a non-profit organization originally based in Washington and now in Iceland.