These Tomes Sum It Up
Everything you ever wanted to know about sustainable development – two mammoth efforts sum it up.
Our Fragile World: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development is 2240 pages long. It comes with an accompanying CD-Rom and two-year access to the web-based Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems which debuts in December 2001. It presents the vision and thinking of over 200 authors in support of efforts to solve the complex problems connected with sustainable development. There are interviews with Maurice Strong, Mikhail Gorbachev, Steven Rockefeller, Maritta Koch-Weser and many others.
A large section is devoted to economics, business and public policy, and sustainable business and development. Among the many articles are: “International Commodity Policy”, “Growth, Sustainability, and the Power of Scale,” “The Role of Business and Industry,” “The Information Economy and the Internet,” and “Sustainable Economic Systems.”
The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems organizes the work of many of the world’ s foremost scholars, experts, and policy-makers in all major fields. It represents the ‘ state-of-the-art’ on virtually every aspect of the life support systems on which we depend with 200 subject themes and 6000 contributors. And there are messages from Richard R. Ernst, Nobel Laureate-Chemistry, Leon M. Lederman, Nobel Laureate-Physics, M.S. Swaminathan, Ramon First World Food Prize, Jean-Marie Lehn, Nobel Prize-Chemistry, J.L.Lions, Japan Prize, and S.P. Kapitza, UNESCO Kalinga Laureate.
http://www.eolss.net
Kevin Rosner: environmentmtg@hotmail.com
Dashboard of Sustainability
“The Dashboard of Sustainability” is a unique new way to present indicators of sustainable development – as gauges similar to the control panel of an aircraft or car. The instrument turns a complex array of economic, social and environmental performance indicators into a simple graphic representation of a country’s current position relative to an agreed consensus about sustainability.
Its purpose is to inform decision-makers, the media and the general public on the status of a nation’s progress toward, or away from, sustainability. It has gone through several versions and is still a work in progress.
It enables experts in one field (e.g. environment or social issues or economics), to get a snapshot of the whole picture. It shows the weak and strong points for each indicator by country, relative to the other 100+ countries contained in the database. http://www.iisd.org/cgsdi/dashboard.htm
Best Practices in Sustainable Development
This searchable database contains over 1100 proven solutions from more than 120 countries to the common social, economic and environmental problems of an urbanizing world. It demonstrates the practical ways in which communities, governments and the private sector are working together to improve governance, eradicate poverty, provide access to shelter, land and basic services, protect the environment and support economic development. In 2000, 700+ submissions and updates from more than 100 countries were received; 112 were classified as best practices.
http://www.bestpractices.org
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2001 World Habitat Awards
The Building & Social Housing Foundation seeks entries for the 2001 World Habitat Awards. This is the 17th year of this annual competition – its purpose is to award and publicize projects that can be replicated around the world.
Award-winning projects offer practical, imaginative solutions to current housing problems and sustainable futures to residents, and can be from any country. They provide their solution in the context of broad, related problems of unemployment, diminishing energy resources and a sustainable future.
The two Award winners receive 10,000. The deadline for preliminary submissions is July 1. For examples of winning projects and entry forms:
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Diane Diacon, Deputy Director, Building & Social Housing Foundation: BSHF@compuserve.com
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