Routledge International Handbook of Sustainable Development

This magisterial and comprehensive volume is indispensable reading for anyone wishing seriously to come to grips with the nature and scope of sustainable development. It covers the full range of issues one could immediately think of and many more besides. These six parts address the history and evolution of the concept of sustainable development, institutional dimensional sustainable development, environmental dimensions, social dimensions, economic dimensions and future challenges. There are 28 chapters in all. The first gives a fascinating historical overview of concept first widely used in a 1987 report, but defined in many ways and from many angles since that time. There are indeed many competing discourses and interests, which is well illustrated in a discussion of the situation in China. Among the institutional dimensions are the role of illegality, islands as analogues of larger issues in sustainable development, the process of writing IPCC reports, population health and ecological overshoot, and education for sustainable development, which has yet to be incorporated in the mainstream but which is vital for the future (p. 115). Young people need to be informed so as to question prevailing economic assumptions and the system that would like to incorporate them.

Environmental dimensions include biodiversity, water, architecture and design, the management of ecosystem services and the tension between conservation and economic growth. Buildings are associated with 50% of carbon emissions, and Keith Bothwell outlines the principles of sustainable design while at the same time commenting on the huge expense of retrofitting existing buildings without some form of government subsidies. He sets considerable store by traditional building designs for particular habitats. The chapter on ecosystem services has interesting discussion ecologically dependent functions, goods and services of rivers. Two of the essays under and social dimensions on indigenous perspectives and the relationship between food and sustainable development are quite brilliant. The first sensitises the reader to the human rights and ecological violations imposed by Europeans through colonialism and imperialism on indigenous peoples, who have a much wider view of the interests of all living beings. Food and environment are of course tightly coupled and our current systems are based on the power and interests of large corporations. In this section there are also essays on the politics of sustainable consumption, environmental justice and sustainable tourism development - the number of tourists has increased by 50% is the year 2000, with the latest 2013 figure at 1,087 billion. This may seem a lot, but the vast majority of humans on the planet have never been in an aeroplane.

Moving on to economic dimensions, we have a magisterial essay on ecological economics, which is clearly demarcated in its priorities from the green economy. I regard the adoption of a new measure beyond GDP as urgent, and the authors discuss the index of sustainable economic welfare (ISEW) and the genuine progress indicator (GPI). There is also a further essay on indicators for sustainable development and a critique of corporate social responsibility along with a piece on urban transport and China's transition to sensibility. Among future challenges are what the authors call the creeping incubation of disaster, women's rights to sustainable development, governance issues and agro-ecology as a comprehensive approach that goes beyond variations on neo-liberalism. According to Graham Woodgate, we need to recognise the unsustainability of transforming fossil fuels into food and 'establish an enduring basis for the ongoing co-evolution of society and nature.' (p. 376) our current system is based on subsidies from the geological past and loans from the ecological future. I think he is right that this 'huge burden of ecological debt will eventually bankrupt industrial capitalism and demand new, post-liberal politics and economics.'