Current and expanding human activities are moving us towards ever deeper unsustainability. While there is no single, simple means of reversing the invidious biophysical trends and redirecting the distribution of benefits, one necessary step is to approach every new and renewed undertaking as an opportunity to deliver maximum multiple, mutually reinforcing, fairly distributed and lasting gains. Finding the best options for enhancing such gains by comparing alternatives, addressing all the key requirements for progress towards sustainability and avoiding significant adverse effects, is the essential purpose of sustainability assessment.
This book addresses the theory and practice of sustainability assessment applications, drawing from experiences globally in a variety of sectors and presenting lessons learned. Diverse international case studies from professionals and academics demonstrate progress so far in exploring openings, testing approaches to application and establishing best practice. The book illustrates means of specifying generic sustainability criteria for the context of particular applications, reports on the resulting insights, and examines the barriers and opportunities for further advances.
This book is an important resource for students, academics and professionals in the areas of Governance, Environmental Assessment, Planning and Policy Making, Corporate Social Responsibility and Applied Sustainability.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction 2. Application needs and opportunities 3. From criteria and processes to applications 4. Applications Bridge: an introduction to chapters five to fifteen 5. The Mackenzie Gas project in Canada’s Northwest Territories 6. Peanut shells and national energy/agricultural policy in Senegal 7. Sugarcane ethanol in Brazil 8. Ontario energy planning and the Ontario Power Authority’s Integrated Power System Plan 9. Infrastructure projects in Portugal 10. Water governance and urban sustainability in Arizona 11. Water Corporation’s Yarragadee water project in Western Australia 12. Lower Churchill hydropower project review 13. Community sustainability planning in Canada 14. Post-tsunami and reactor failure recovery planning in Japan 15. Sustainability assessment and mining legacies in Canada 16. Lessons and ways forward
About the Author :
Robert B. Gibson is a Professor at the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, University of Waterloo, Canada. He has been involved with environmental policy issues and broader sustainability imperatives as a practitioner, advisor and academic since the mid-1970s. His initial book on sustainability assessment, focused on criteria and processes, was published by Earthscan in 2005.
Review :
"Sustainability Assessment takes up the mantle from Gibson’s 2005 book seamlessly. It provides greater clarity over the approaches to be taken, allowing for significant variation to suit the diverse contexts which are clearly illustrated through case studies; and highlights the way forward to a more sustainable future." – Alan Bond, senior lecturer, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, UK, and Extraordinary Professor, Research Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management, North West University, South Africa.
"Robert Gibson's criteria-led approach to sustainability assessment and the practical examples from contributing international experts in the field is a must read. More importantly it provides a 'must do' guide to sustainable behaviours and performance." – Angus Morrison-Saunders, Associate Professor in Environmental Assessment at Murdoch University, Australia
