The Sustainability Revolution: Portrait of a Paradigm Shift

by Andres R. Edwards

Book Overview

Sustainability has become a buzzword in the last decade, but its full meaning is complex, emerging from a range of different sectors. In practice, it has become the springboard for millions of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0865715319
• ISBN13: 9780865715318
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: New Society Publishers
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A great guide on sustainability

The author did a great job on presenting an explanation of what the term sustainability means in view of general confusion or bad interpretation of its significance and its dimension. Many companies go around announcing themselves as "green companies", just because they are entangled on a couple of environmental activities, but at the same time they continue ripping the planet, or freely disposing of their wastes, externalizing the costs to society. At the same time, the value of this book is reinforced when it presents a list of other important organizations dedicated to make sustainability a reality, modeling what hopefully must be the modern economy. Higly recommended.

A Sustainable Framework

The Sustainability Revolution provides a broad portrait of a paradigm shift, as the sub title claims. Although I checked this out of the library, this is a book to own and refer to especially if you are interested in furthering sustainable best practices or even wondering what they are. Sustainability can be a challenge to get understanding and organized around and this book neatly categorizes it in 7 chapters and concludes with a substantial resource section; it is well referenced throughout for additional follow-up. First we read about how sustainability's environmental roots were expanded to include consideration of the 3 E's, ecology, economy and equity; sustainability therefore looks at the interdependencies of the 3E's and engages a diversity of stakeholders when we broaden the undeniable scope of impact. Ecology is the environmental consideration in which we shift to a long term perspective, acknowledge and respond in turn to our dependence on our life support systems. Looking at economy we see a healthy environment and a healthy economy coexisting, not the opposition of these as is often still purported. The human well being requirement of the sustainability triangle is referred to herein as equity or equality as it acknowledges that the well being of the individual is dependant on the well being of the community and calls us toward a spirit of cooperation and ethics within the distribution of basic resources such as food, shelter and water and a greater emphasis on the value of education. The author then proceeds to describe sustainability principles in 5 basic categories, Community, Commerce, Natural Resources, Ecological Design, and the Biosphere with education as a key component of each as we weave our way into the sustainable path. Each of the respective principles are presented in a separate highlighted box within each chapter and then commented on by the author. Sustainability and Community describes tools created by task forces and working groups to tackle the challenges of bringing the 3E's into balance by implementing long term systematic approaches at all levels, local, regional, national and international communities. These include the Ontario Roundtable on Environment and Economy (local initiative,) the Minnesota Planning Environmental Quality Board Principles of Sustainable Development for Minnesota (regional,) The Netherlands National Environmental Policy (national,) and the Earth Charter's Commission and ICLEI (international.) All told these community based principles integrate a diversity of perspectives and interests toward defining and working toward a shared vision for a sustainable future. Sustainability and Commerce reveals how business practices and the long term health of our planet and all its life forms are advantaged when business mimics natural systems rather than destroys them. The precautionary principle is presented as an ethical standard wherein the company realizes that it must consider it

Great Intro to Sustainability

This book is perfect way to grasp what has happened and why in the sustainability movement. Andres Edwards introduces all of the right resources and contacts for anyone who is vested in our sustainability on this planet. He covers business, community and governmental approaches. In this book he simply introduces all the major themes a very broad field. It can be a little text book, but is also a very interesting read. I am the director for Sustainable Fairfax and Andres has also been a wonderful speaker for our volunteer trainings.

useful book

I appreciated both what was presented about sustainability and how carefully Edwards compares the environmentalism and sustainability movements. He doesn't "diss" environmentalism, but illuminates a lot of general principles of the sustainability movement that show it to be significantly more sustainable as a movement. I found each chapter to be complete, but there is a lot of parallel structure in the book so I limited myself to a chapter a day so I wouldn't confuse things between chapters. Next edition: I could have used more explanation for why social equity is the third E (Ecology, Economy, Equity) of sustainability. I can deduce it on my own, but I just could have used some help understanding this at a fundamental level. Overall, I loved this book and read just about every word of the text. I have marked up and flagged the extensive reference sections and have already chased down a few follow-up topics.

A complete primer on sustainability

"The Sustainability Revolution" is a thorough review of the evolution of sustainability. For a text loaded with facts and details, Andres wrote it so it would be understandable for those who are new to the history and principles of sustainability. The resources section is especially helpful because it lists organizations and contacts mentioned in the book along with brief descriptions about them. I'm sure that many of our customers -- for the DVD "Architecture to Zucchini: The people, companies and organizations pioneering sustainability" -- would be very interested in this book. I highly recommend it to higher education, consultants and business leaders.