Practicing Sustainability, published by Springer, has been selected as a silver-award winner of the 2013 Nautilus Book Awards, in the "Green Living / Sustainability" category. The award program honors and promotes books that "inspire and connect our lives as individuals, communities and global citizens." Previous winners of the Nautilus Awards include His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Deepak Chopra and Barbara Kingsolver.
Among the wealth of perspectives offered in the book, some notable contributions include a foreword by Nobel laureate Michael Spence, as well as editorials by Robert Rubin, Klaus Schwab and George Whitesides, and an afterword by M.S. Swaminathan.
Human civilization has faced many threats in its history, but perhaps none so serious as the changes the planet is undergoing as a result of our way of life in the industrialized world. Society is now taking the first tentative steps on a great quest to find a sustainable way forward. Practicing Sustainability seeks to define the concept of sustainability and provide key insights into how to put it into practice.
Practitioners and thinkers from a wide spectrum of backgrounds and professions, from chefs, musicians, artists and poets, to scientific leaders, entrepreneurs and policy makers, deepen our understanding of the role that each of us can play in understanding and promoting sustainability. Each contributor addresses what sustainability means, what is most appealing about the concept and what they would like to change to improve its perception and practice. What emerges from this collection of brief essays is a wide variety of views that confirm an important insight: sustainability is pursued in different ways not only due to different interpretations, but also because of varying incentives, trade-offs and altruistic motives.
Practicing and achieving sustainability starts with a willingness to look critically at the concept, which is precisely what this books sets out to do. As a stepping stone to the future, Practicing Sustainability stokes meaningful discussion on the issue and helps illuminate just how difficult it can be to pin down a plan for sustainable development.
If there is one message, it is that achieving sustainability will require more than what we have been doing. While technology has solved many problems of the past, finding and practicing a sustainable way forward also demands that pragmatism and common sense have a place at the table. For more information or to purchase the book, visit the book's webpage.
Madhavan, G. et al (Eds.)
Practicing Sustainability
2013, XXXVI, 244 p. 15 illus. in color
Hardcover €42.75 | £22.95 | $39.95
ISBN 978-1-4614-4348-3