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Sustainability Science

Managing Risk and Resilience for Sustainable Development

A new, holistic transdisciplinary endeavour born in the 21st century, Sustainability Science: Managing Risk and Resilience for Sustainable Development aims to provide concept… Read more

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Description

A new, holistic transdisciplinary endeavour born in the 21st century, Sustainability Science: Managing Risk and Resilience for Sustainable Development aims to provide conceptual and practical approaches to sustainable development that help us to grasp and address uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity and dynamic change. Four aspects that permeate our contemporary world and undermine much of our traditional ways of thinking and doing. The concepts of risk and resilience are central in this endeavour to explain, understand and improve core challenges of humankind.

Sustainability and sustainable development are increasingly important guiding principles across administrative levels, functional sectors and scientific disciplines. Policymakers, practitioners and academics continue to wrestle with the complexity of risk, resilience and sustainability, but because of the necessary transdisciplinary focus, it is difficult to find authoritative content in a single source.

Sustainability Science:

 Managing Risk and Resilience for Sustainable Development presents the state of the world in relation to major sustainability challenges and their symptomatic effects, such as climate change, environmental degradation, poverty, disease and disasters. It then continues by elaborating on ways to approach and change our world to make it a safer and more sustainable place for current and future generations. The natural, applied and social sciences are woven together throughout the book to provide a more inclusive understanding of relevant processes, changes, trends and events.

Key features

  • Shows how disturbances, disruptions and disasters have always been intrinsic byproducts of the same human-environment systems that supply us with opportunities, as well as what implications that has for policy and practice towards sustainable development today
  • Introduces a new approach for grasping and addressing issues of risk and resilience in relation to sustainable development that is firmly rooted in a comprehensive philosophical and theoretical foundation and clearly linking the conceptual with the practical
  • Presents a holistic agenda for change that includes a more explicit role of science, reinforced focus on capacity development and the overall necessity of fundamental social change
  • Features more than 150 figures, full-color photographs, diagrams, and illustrations to highlight major themes and aid in the retention of key concepts

Readership

The primary audience includes geoscientists, engineers and environmental scientists responsible for, as well as in private companies or international organizations involved in, hazard and disaster management, risk management, societal planning, and climate change adaptation. The more advocacy-oriented parts of the book will interest government policymakers. A secondary audience includes students at the graduate level taking related coursework within the disciplines outlined above.

Table of contents

  • Acknowledgments
  • Chapter 1. Introducing the Book
    • Introduction
    • Purpose of the Book
    • Demarcation of the Book
    • Structure of the Book
    • Conclusion
  • Part I. The State of the World
    • Chapter 2. Our Past Defining Our Present
      • Introduction
      • Conquering Our Dynamic World
      • Social Change over Millennia
      • The Invention of Risk
      • Conclusion
    • Chapter 3. Our Sustainability Challenges
      • Introduction
      • Our Challenges as Discussed on World Conferences
      • Our Boundaries for Sustainability
      • Conclusion
    • Chapter 4. Our Disturbances, Disruptions and Disasters in a Dynamic World
      • Introduction
      • Our Symptomatic Events
      • Our Processes of Change
      • Conclusion
  • Part II. Approaching the World
    • Chapter 5. Conceptual Frames for Risk, Resilience and Sustainable Development
      • Introduction
      • Philosophical Assumptions about Our World
      • Development, Sustainability and Risk
      • Managing Risk for Sustainable Development
      • The Concept of Resilience
      • Conclusion
    • Chapter 6. Resilience—From Panacean to Pragmatic
      • Introduction
      • Inherent Restrictions for Measuring Resilience
      • Operationalizing Resilience
      • Challenges for Developing Resilience
      • Linking Resilience to Other Frameworks
      • Conclusion
    • Chapter 7. The World as Human–Environment Systems
      • Introduction
      • Why Human–Environment Systems?
      • Systems Approaches and Concepts
      • Constructing Human–Environment Systems
      • Conclusion
  • Part III. Changing the World
    • Chapter 8. Science and Change
      • Introduction
      • The Sciences of the Complemental
      • Two Scientific Processes
      • Reliability, Validity and Workability
      • Limitations of Science for Change
      • Conclusion
    • Chapter 9. Developing Capacities for Resilience
      • Introduction
      • Four Levels of Capacity
      • Capacity Development for Resilience
      • Central “Ships” in Capacity Development
      • Conclusion
    • Chapter 10. Social Change for a Resilient Society
      • Introduction
      • Describing Social Change
      • Prescribing Social Change
      • Conclusion
    • Chapter 11. Concluding Remarks
      • Introduction
      • The State of the World
      • Approaching the World
      • Changing the World
      • Conclusion
  • References
  • Index

Review quotes

"...explores approaches to making the planet a more resilient and safe place for the future. The book offers a holistic agenda for societal change."—Sea Technology Magazine, December 2014

Product details

About the author

PB

Per Becker

Per Becker is a Professor of Risk and Sustainability at Lund University (Sweden), Research Professor of Climate, Environment and Sustainability at NORCE (Norway), and Extraordinary Professor of Environmental Sciences and Management at North-West University (South Africa). He has an interdisciplinary background with a PhD in Sociology and another PhD in Engineering and has combined academia with a professional career for international organisations and public authorities. His research group has had a significant impact on policy and practice concerning issues of risk and sustainability, perhaps most notably, as a leading scientific provider of knowledge cited in global UN policies concerning capacity development and as a trusted partner to a range of local authorities, governmental agencies, and international organisations.
Affiliations and expertise
Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety, Lund University, Sweden; Climate, Environment, and Sustainability, NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Norway; and Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management, North-West University, South Africa

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