Margaret Robertson - Sustainability: Principles and Practice

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Sustainability Principles and Practice

This new and expanded edition builds upon the first editions accessible and comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of sustainability. The focus is on furnishing solutions and equipping the student with both conceptual understanding and technical skills for the workplace.

Each chapter explores one aspect of the field, first introducing concepts and presenting issues, then supplying tools for working toward solutions. Techniques for management and measurement as well as case studies from around the world are provided. The second edition includes a complete update of the text, with increased coverage of major topics including the Anthropocene; complexity; resilience; environmental ethics; governance; the IPCCs latest findings on climate change; Sustainable Development Goals; and new thinking on native species and novel ecosystems.

Chapters include further reading and discussion questions. The book is supported by a companion website with links, detailed reading lists, glossary, and additional case studies, together with projects, research problems, and group activities, all of which focus on real-world problem solving of sustainability issues.

The textbook is designed to be used by undergraduate college and university students in sustainability degree programs and other programs in which sustainability is taught.

Margaret Robertson is a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and teaches at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, USA, where she coordinates the Sustainability degree program.

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Sustainability Principles
and Practice

Second Edition

Margaret Robertson

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Second edition published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2017 Margaret Robertson

The right of Margaret Robertson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

First edition published by Routledge 2014

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Robertson, Margaret, author.

Title: Sustainability principles and practice / Margaret Robertson.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Earlier edition: 2014. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016036622| ISBN 9781138650213 (hbk) | ISBN 9781138650244 (pbk) | ISBN 9781315625478 (ebk)

Subjects: LCSH: Sustainability. | Sustainable development. | Environmental economics.

Classification: LCC HC79.E5 R6243 2017 | DDC 338.9/27dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036622

ISBN: 978-1-138-65021-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-65024-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62547-8 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon

Visit the companion website: http://www.routledgesustainabilityhub.com/

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The great strength of Robertsons book is its breadth of coverage. From marketing to life cycle costing to the latest science on climate change, Sustainability Principles and Practice serves as a welcoming guide into the often jargon-laden field of sustainability.

Jay Antle, Johnson County Community College, USA

This book is a solid and well-crafted introduction to the field, conveying both the substance and the heart of sustainability work with style and grace. It will help students and other new entrants to the field get oriented to the special interdisciplinary challenges of sustainability, and to its core mission: helping us learn to be better caretakers of our planetary future.

Alan AtKisson, President & CEO AtKisson Inc., USA & AtKisson Europe AB, Sweden. President, ISIS Academy GmbH, Germany. Member, Presidents Science and Technology Advisory Council (PSTAC), European Commission

This is an important book. Robertson has a keen sense of the situation and an even keener sense of alternatives and means to achieve them. The author gives it to you the way it is and then provides some important pointers to resilient futures. This book contains both a diagnosis and a treatment. Read it.

Simon Bell, Open University, UK

An organized, engaging, and even inspiring collection of ideas thatif internalized and used to inform policieswould enable societies to thrive within a healthy environment. I wish this book had been available when I was first learning about social and environmental systems.

Robert Dietz, Editor, The Daly News, Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

A comprehensive and practical map of the evolving field of sustainability. This well-organized and thoroughly researched textbook provides both students and educators with a useful guide to the essential sustainability topics. Robertson delivers an important work that will help to define the knowledge base in the sustainability field.

Andrs R. Edwards, Founder, EduTracks, USA. Author of The Sustainability Revolution and Thriving Beyond Sustainability

Robertson places sustainability in the connectedness between human culture and the living world. She links technical knowledge with tools for developing positive solutions and putting them into effect, including working collaboratively in organizations with other people.

Bruce K. Ferguson, University of Georgia, USA

Robertson has distilled the essential background information that students, our rising decision-makers, need so that they can follow her clearly defined roadmap to a sustainable future for the planet.

Lee Kump, Pennsylvania State University, USA

Sustainability Principles and Practice covers a broad range of topics, principles and conceptsat several scales from energy, water, pollution, ecosystems, food, and citiesto a charge to future agents for change at policy, institutional, and personal, experiential levels. A must-have book to refresh your knowledge and to make a better world.

Alison Kwok, University of Oregon, USA

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From now on when someone asks me what is sustainability, I will tell them to read Margaret Robertsons book, Sustainability Principles and Practice, which presents clearly and thoroughly the multi-faceted concept of sustainability in a very readable form.

Norbert Lechner, Auburn University, USA

Everyone thinks they know what sustainability is, but few people truly understand itand fewer still can explain it well. Robertson cuts through the greenwash and the clichs with a top-notch exploration of the topic in all its complexities. Its an enjoyable read thats both thoroughly grounded in science and steeped in wonder at our fascinating, fragile planet.

Daniel Lerch, Post Carbon Institute, USA

Robertsons incisive analysis is both global and specific, comprehensive and inclusive. There is careful blending of facts and values, what is and what ought to be. You will find yourself engaged. I guarantee it.