Do Global Attitudes and Behaviors Support Sustainable Development?
November 2005 Leiserowitz, Anthony A., Robert W. Kates, and Thomas M. Parris.
Sustainability science will pay a critical role, at multiple scales and using multiple methodologies, as it works to identify and explain the key relationships between sustainability values, attitudes, and behaviors -- and (more)...

Outside the Large Cities; The demographic importance of small urban centres and large villages in Africa, Asia and Latin America
June 2006 David Satterthwaite
A quarter of the world's population lives in urban centres with fewer than half a million inhabitants. Of the 1.5 billion people living in these 'small urban centres', nearly three-quarters live in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  Several hundred million (more)...

The globalization of socio-ecological systems: An agenda for scientific research
August, 2006 Oran R. Young, Frans Berkhout, Gilberto C. Gallopin, Marco A. Janssen, Elinor Ostrom and Sander van der Leeuw
We argue that globalization is a central feature of coupled human–environment systems or, as we call them, socio-ecological systems (SESs). In this article, we focus on the effects of globalization on the resilience, vulnerability, and adaptability of these systems. We (more)...

Linkages between vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity
August, 2006 Gilberto C. Gallopín
This article uses a systemic perspective to identify and analyze the conceptual relations among vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity within socio-ecological systems (SES). Since different intellectual traditions use the terms in different, sometimes incompatible, ways, they emerge as strongly related but unclear in the precise (more)...

Special Issue on The Roles of Academia in Regional Sustainability Initiatives
2009 Edited by Gyula Zilahy, Matti Melanen, Victor D. Phillips, John Sheffy and Jouni Korhonen
Institutions of Higher Education have to cope with an array of challenges in the 21st century including globalization of teaching, research and outreach activities; additionally there are dramatic increases in competition for students, staff and funding sources. Meanwhile, local and regional involvement in regional sustainable (more)...

Getting it Together Interdisciplinarity and Sustainability in the Higher Education Institution
2009 Center for Sustainable Futures
This paper seeks to clarify the relationship between sustainability and interdisciplinarity as a contribution to furthering policy and practice towards sustainability oriented interdisciplinarity in teaching and learning in higher education.Key Findings: There appears to be rising demand for interdisciplinary understanding in (more)...

Putting People on the Map An Approach to Integrating Social Data in Conservation Planning
2009 Sheri L. Stephenson and Michael B. Mascia
Conservation planning is integral to strategic and effective operations of public and private sector conservation organizations. Largely grounded in the biological sciences, the field of conservation planning has historically made limited use of social data . We offer a simple (more)...

Revolutionizing China's Environmental Protection
2008 Jianguo Liu & Jared Diamond
China's growth has created severe environmental problems that will require fundamental changes in China's administrative system and its model of economic development.

How Green Are Biofuels?
2008 Jorn P. W. Scharlemann and William F. Laurance
Many biofuels are associated with lower greenhouse-gas emissions but have greater aggregate environmental costs than gasoline.

Climate Change, Deforestation, and the Fate of the Amazon
2008 Yadvinder Malhi, J. Timmons Roberts, Richard A. Betts, Timothy J. Killeen, Wenhong Li, and Carlos A. Nobre
The forest biome of Amazonia is one of Earth's greatest biological treasures and a major component of the Earth system. This century, it faces the dual threats of deforestation and stress from climate change. Here, we summarize some of the (more)...