"This comprehensive volume - containing 27 chapters and contributions from six continents - presents and discusses key principles, perspectives, and practices of social learning in the context of sustainability. Social learning is explored from a range of fields challenged by sustainability including: organizational learning, environmental management and corporate social responsibility; multi-stakeholder governance; education, learning and educational psychology; multiple land-use and integrated rural development; and consumerism and critical consumer education. An entire section of the book is devoted to a number of (...) reflective case studies of people, organizations and communities using forms of social learning in moving towards sustainability. 'This book brings together a range of ideas, stories, and discussions about purposeful learning in communities aimed at creating a world that is more sustainable than the one currently in prospect....The book is designed to expand the network of conversations through which our society can confront various perspectives, discover emerging patterns, and apply learning to a variety of emotional and social contexts.' From the Foreword by Fritjof Capra, co-founder of the Center of Ecoliteracy. 'Joining what is so clear and refreshing in this book with the larger movements toward a critically democratic and activist education that is worthy of its name, is but one step in the struggle for sustainability. But it is an essential step if we are to use the insights that are included in this book.' From the Afterword by Michael Apple, author of 'Educating the ""Right"" Way: Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality'.". (shrink)

Pedagogically speaking, how can we best transform a student’s understanding of the environment? To move students to action, and to inspire sustainable lifestyles, environmental educators would do well to consider personal pedagogical approaches, as opposed to merely presenting scientific facts about climate change and species extinction. In this paper, we present the power of myth as a compelling option. We expand on prevailing pedagogies of myth, such as Matthew Farrelly’s approach, and argue that mythical stories taken from Nordic folk (...) traditions, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran can enhance environmental education by introducing multiple alternative ways of relating to nature, facilitating mutual teacher-student reflections, and by building more responsive relationships with fauna and flora. Building upon Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical theory, we contend that the process of imagining sustainable worlds is facilitated by engagement with mythical stories and that the counter-productive imposition of worldviews on students is minimized through critical discussions of relevant learning materials. (shrink)

This paper explores the Shanghai 2010 World Expo to show how spectacle serves a governing function of the Chinese developmental state. I introduce soil exegesis as a method to excavate sedimented power relations of spectacle, undergirding the expo’s presentation. This approach investigates how spectacle is a state-territorializing project and pedagogical venture that relies on and denies the state socialist-era’s waste, to produce a ‘new nature’ and perform socio-technical management of crisis and crowds. Dynamic rearrangement of soil quality and composition (...) facilitated the urban redevelopment zone of sustainable futures, while interactive-technocratic environments inserted visitor bodies into expo surveillance systems and infrastructure without reference to the embedded political ecology of the mass event within Shanghai and beyond. The article concludes by considering ethical legacies of the event and the ways ‘sustainable spectacle’ operates through waste administration and environmental performance that ‘greenwash’ the socialist past and obstruct other governing arrangements. (shrink)

Individualist normative theories appear inadequate for the complex moral challenges of climate change. In climate ethics, this is especially notable with the relative marginalization of Kant. I argue that Kant’s philosophy, understood through its historical and cosmopolitan dimensions, has untapped potential for the climate crisis. First, I situate Kant in climate ethics and evaluate his marginalization due to perceived individualism, interiority and anthropocentrism. Then, I explore aspects of Kant’s historical and cosmopolitan writings, which present a global, future-orientated picture of humanity. (...) Ultimately, Kant’s philosophy offers a unique take on the climate deadlock capable of sustaining the individual in the collective. (shrink)

Human ecology, it is argued, even when embracing recent developments in the natural sciences and granting a place to culture, tends to justify excessively pessimistic conclusions about the prospects for creating a sustainable world order. This is illustrated through a study of the work and assumptions of Richard Newbold Adams and Stephen Bunker. It is argued that embracing hierarchy theory as this has been proposed and elaborated by Herbert Simon, Howard Pattee, T.F.H. Allen and others enables human ecology (...) to conceive humans both as part of nature and as cultural beings in a way that gives due regard to the ethical development of humanity. That is, ethical constraints need no longer be conceived of as 'unnatural'. Characterizing the nature of such constraints, conceived of as emerging from the Hegelian 'struggle for recognition', this argument is shown to justify some optimism about the future, and to give some idea of how society should be organized if ethical constraints, able to constrain humanity’s relationship to the rest of nature, are to prevail. (shrink)

Every civilization has its own worldview that determines its approaches towards subjects such as human beings, nature and God. Most modern humans have tried to control all nature as property. Nature, therefore, was considered as the booty, which should have been used entirely. Now, the modern perspective has revealed problems including emerging and dangerous diseases, resistant bacteria, and extinction of many animals, global warming, climate change; air, sound and light pollution, and so on. The problem is that human beings cannot (...) continue these attitudes as a viable survival strategy. In this paper, using conceptual analysis, we try to explain the epistemic gap regarding the positions of humankind and nature which happened after modernism and then present the image which Ibn ‘Arabī, a traditional sage and philosopher depicted for the integrated world. He developed a comprehensive perspective of the world, considering it as a manifestation of an Existence. He considered humans as the God’s vice-regent who must manage the earth and keep the creatures as God's representative. (shrink)

Inspired by the challenging encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, issued by Pope Francis, the articles in this volume reflect on our collective responsibility to live together as brothers and sisters. Looking at the spiritual and moral foundations for a sustainable and viable lifestyle, the book urges us to introspection. The aim is to help us to live lives sustained by viable ethics, and open to others with hope and joy, in spite of the challenges that we face collectively and individually.

Sustainability reporting and assurance of sustainability reports have been used by organizations in an attempt to provide accountability to their stakeholders. A better understanding of current practices is important to provide a base for comparative and trend analyses. This paper aims to consolidate and provide information on sustainability reporting, assurance of sustainability reports and types of assurance providers. Another aim of this paper is to provide a descriptive analysis of these practices for a global sample, comparing results with previous studies, (...) and suggesting opportunities for future research. To accomplish these objectives, a literature review was performed, an analysis of the organizations included in the Fortune Global 500 2010 was completed, and results were presented and consolidated by country. These results demonstrate that all organizations analysed provided some type of information in relation to their social or environmental performance in their official website. The percentage of organizations issuing a sustainability report has been increasing in the last few years. However, the percentage of organizations assuring their sustainability report has stagnated. Types of assurance engagements include those performed by accountants and non-accountants, and new practices have emerged, namely the “mixed approach” and the “stakeholder or specialist review”. The analysis also shows that the practices of issuing sustainability reports and having them assured have become a world-wide phenomenon, occurring in developed, and emerging economies around the world. (shrink)

The first edition of A Better World, Inc. showed how companies can profit by solving global problems. Increasingly, companies and investors are capitalizing on these opportunities. The three factors necessary for success were revealed to be effective corporate governance, stakeholder engagement, and collaboration. Racial equity and justice, and gender equity, were also themes in the original edition. By drawing on new research and case studies, this updated edition shows that inclusion and sustainability are in fact fundamental prerequisites for prosperity (...) for companies and society. Specifically, racial inequity and injustice, and gender inequity, are systemic problems that impede businesses from achieving their greater potential in the global marketplace; in the meantime, society suffers as well. The second edition of A Better World, Inc. builds on the first by showing that companies have the power and incentives – and their boards of directors have the responsibility and the authority – to drive solutions to social, economic, and environmental challenges. Readers will learn how companies and their boards, together with nonprofits and governments, can drive prosperity by centering equity and sustainability. This edition is organized to address environmental, social, and governance practices, which are priority interests for investors, media, the public, government, and others to assess company practices and profitability. (shrink)

Despite some clear positives, the draft text of the Sustainable Development Goals does not fulfill its self-proclaimed purpose of inspiring and guiding a concerted international effort to eradicate severe poverty everywhere in all of its forms. We offer some critical comments on the proposed agreement and suggest 10 ways to embolden the goals and amplify their appeal and moral power. While it may well be true that the world's poor are better off today than their predecessors were decades (...) or centuries ago, to judge whether this is moral progress, we must bring into view what was possible then and what is possible now. We may well find that there have never been so many people avoidably subjected to life-threatening deprivations as there are today, and if this is the case, we should insist that our governments end this oppression immediately through appropriate institutional reforms to be prominently outlined in their post-2015 agenda. (shrink)

It is provocative, but not uncommon, to compare the work of art to a plant. Art is inseparable from the aim to pass on knowledge to future generations, just as plants strive to reproduce. This paper forwards the art-plant hypothesis that views works of art and plants not only as structurally similar, but teleologically united. We look to two models of art to test this hypothesis: earthworks of the land art movement, and the ancient Greek concept of craft or techne. (...) Plant grafting serves as an example artform that is instructive for crafting a more sustainable world. We approach plant grafting as a sustainable technology in an age of genetic monopolization, and as a powerful metaphor for our common roots and responsibility to create a better world. (shrink)

Using a unique dataset provided by the international rating agency GES®, we investigate the effects of corporate sustainability and industry-related exposure to environmental and social risks on the market value of MSCI World firms. The results show a negative relationship in the earlier years of our sample period. However, the analysis reveals that the capital market perception of sustainability has changed owing to the financial crisis. Looking at the height of the crisis in September 2008, the month in which (...) Lehman Brothers shocked the world’s capital markets by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, we find that the previously negative perception of corporate sustainability across its various dimensions was positively affected and offset. In addition, as a moderated regression analysis shows, the crisis led to a positive perception of corporate sustainability in industries that are exposed to higher environmental and social risks. Our study has the practical implication that executives, in particular in industries with high environmental and social risks, should increase their commitment to corporate sustainability due to the changes in the institutional setting triggered by the financial crisis. (shrink)

Recent work in science and technological studies has provided a clearer understanding of the way in which science functions in society and the interconnectedness among different strands of science, policy, economy and environment. It is well acknowledged that a different way of thinking is required in order to address problems facing the global community, particularly in relation to issues of risk and uncertainty, which affect humanity as a whole. However, approaches to education in science tend to perpetuate an outmoded way (...) of thinking that is incommensurable with preparing individuals for participation and decision-making in an uncertain, complex world. Drawing on experiences of interdisciplinary dialogue and practice in a higher education context, this book illustrates how reformulating the agenda in science and technology can have a revolutionary impact on learning and teaching in the classroom at all levels. This exceptional study will interest scholars in Education, Science, Technology, and Society, and those looking to further deliberative democracy and civic participation in their students. (shrink)

In this article, we address the limitations of sustainable development as an orienting educational horizon of hope and change, given that mainstream development presumes the possibility of perpetual growth and consumption on a finite planet. Facing these limitations requires us to consider the inherently violent and unsustainable nature of our modern-colonial modes of existence. Thus, we propose a shift from “education for sustainable development” to “education for the end of the world as we know it.” We contend (...) that the predicament we face is not primarily rooted in ignorance and thus solvable with more knowledge, nor primarily rooted in immorality and thus solvable with more normative values; rather, it is rooted in denials that stem from harmful desires for and investments in the continuity of the securities and satisfactions promised by modernity-coloniality. Faced with these denials, we emphasize a collective need to “grow up” so that we might “show up” differently to do the work that is needed as we face unprecedented global challenges. (shrink)

This essay is an exposition of a profound sustainable linkage for the survival of the earth—the linkage between sustainability from within and sustainability from without. The author, writing from direct experience of both, makes an eloquent plea to seize and work upon the complementarity between the Swedish 'The Natural Step' movement regarding the 'outer', and the Indian 'Management by Human Values' movement about the 'inner'. Building on the best and most well-tested spiritual and scientific traditions and principles—MHV from the (...) East and TNS from the West—the author feels convinced, could and ought to work in close cooperation for the future well-being of organizations and society. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAn estimated 1.5 million people died in 2007 from waterborne illness. While this number is unacceptably high, it represents a 16 percent improvement over the previous three years. This paper discusses the challenges and solutions to delivering clean water in the developing world. It then discusses safe water projects for a children's dormitory in Mae Nam Khun, Thailand, and for a community in Chirundu, Zambia. Both projects were designed and implemented by the Seattle University student chapter of Engineers Without (...) Borders . These projects had technical challenges that are relatively easy to resolve in the developed world, but were particularly challenging in their contexts. This paper examines how these challenges were met through collaboration with several organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control in the United States and small businesses within the host countries. (shrink)

This paper explores the fundamental question of what ‘responsibility’ means to different sets of world views adopted implicitly by business students. The exploration adopts the stakeholder theory and three subsets of the Friedman mentality to explain how individuals may value sustainability initiatives. Subsequently, it explores whether it is better to flow with the dominant economic-driven world view as prescribed by the business school or to challenge it in order to cultivate business students with sustainability-driven values. The conclusion highlights (...) implications for business and management education, as well as the role of entrepreneurship to promote sustainability values. (shrink)

This paper explores the fundamental question of what ‘responsibility’ means to different sets of world views adopted implicitly by business students. The exploration adopts the stakeholder theory and three subsets of the Friedman mentality to explain how individuals may value sustainability initiatives. Subsequently, it explores whether it is better to flow with the dominant economic‐driven world view as prescribed by the business school or to challenge it in order to cultivate business students with sustainability‐driven values. The conclusion highlights (...) implications for business and management education, as well as the role of entrepreneurship to promote sustainability values. (shrink)

Despite the popularity of the term “global,” the making of a global world has been little studied to date and only a few works have been published. It is assumed that this kind of world has already partly crystallized thanks to globalization, but it is not expected to take a more coherent shape until later in the future. The purpose of the paper is to justify the opinion that a global world should be construed as a state (...) of civilization and its interaction with nature fulfilled by securing global sustainability. (shrink)

Arguably the most foundational principle in perception research is that our experience of the world goes beyond the retinal image; we perceive the distal environment itself, not the proximal stimulation it causes. Shape may be the paradigm case of such “unconscious inference”: When a coin is rotated in depth, we infer the circular object it truly is, discarding the perspectival ellipse projected on our eyes. But is this really the fate of such perspectival shapes? Or does a tilted coin (...) retain an elliptical appearance even when we know it’s circular? This question has generated heated debate from Locke and Hume to the present; but whereas extant arguments rely primarily on introspection, this problem is also open to empirical test. If tilted coins bear a representational similarity to elliptical objects, then a circular coin should, when rotated, impair search for a distal ellipse. Here, nine experiments demonstrate that this is so, suggesting that perspectival shapes persist in the mind far longer than traditionally assumed. Subjects saw search arrays of three-dimensional “coins,” and simply had to locate a distally elliptical coin. Surprisingly, rotated circular coins slowed search for elliptical targets, even when subjects clearly knew the rotated coins were circular. This pattern arose with static and dynamic cues, couldn’t be explained by strategic responding or unfamiliarity, generalized across shape classes, and occurred even with sustained viewing. Finally, these effects extended beyond artificial displays to real-world objects viewed in naturalistic, full-cue conditions. We conclude that objects have a remarkably persistent dual character: their objective shape “out there,” and their perspectival shape “from here.”. (shrink)

Schools in the United States have often been tasked with cultivating a political identity that is connected to the nation-state. In the civics classroom, this often means teaching a nation-state centered civic education, which can create a sense of disjuncture for some students. This year-long ethnographic study explores disenfranchised students living in the Virgin Islands’ political identities and interests and how their teachers responded to them. The findings suggest that students entered the classroom with developed and varied political interests and (...) identities that would not necessarily be recognized in a traditional nation-state centered civics class. Teachers responded by providing a culturally sustaining and humanizing civic education that honored their students’ diverse political and cultural identities and interests. (shrink)

Taking the individual human being as a point of reference, this paper examines the sustainability of oneself as a contribution to human society and the biosphere in an evolving world. The proactive role as inquirer/researcher alias designer leads to active inquiry and design of one's life with influential consequences on the lives of other human beings and planetary life forms. To sustain a tenable position between the constructive and destructive forces of contemporary existence, a conscientious and ethical stance becomes (...) central in one's self?understanding of life fulfillment and the pragmatic nature of one's actions in the world. (shrink)

Sustainability as a concept remains just as challenging and important today as it was when the first edition of this book was published. The Second Edition of Sustainability and Design Ethics explores the ethical obligations of knowledgeable people such as design professionals, taking into consideration the numerous changes that have taken place in recent years. This book expands the growing discussion on the principles of sustainability to further include the role of businesses and governments and considers the general recognition that (...) modern society has occurred at the expense of nature with significant social and environmental impacts. Are there limits to the individual's ethical obligation? How do such obligations change or adapt to a world of sustainable design? As the shift toward sustainability proceeds, designers' ethical underpinnings will be confronted with a wider range of people and concerns whose interests must be weighed. The design professionals are likely to be among the lead in the shift toward sustainability because of the special knowledge and expertise provided to them by their education, experience, and distinctive position in society. The entire world of design is being reassessed and the guiding principles and ethics of design reflect this change. New to the Second Edition: Expanded international scope that includes a comparison of professional organizations in the EU, Australia, Canada, Japan and China Discusses how cultural differences between the West and China result in different underlying foundations for professional ethics Revised analyses to reflect changes in regulatory and technical areas such as the inevitable rise of artificial intelligence in design Updated arguments reflecting the need for sustainability and the designer's role and obligations Updated references pertaining to the progress of sustainable design and development Sustainability and Design Ethics, Second Edition is an attempt to explore the ideas and principles that might contribute to the thinking of thoughtful design professionals. The emergence of "green" design discussed in this book is used to evidence progress, but also to demonstrate the degree to which more is needed. (shrink)

How do actors cope when their repeated efforts to bring change seem futile? In this qualitative study, we consider sustainable development initiatives within a U.S. higher education institution where repeated efforts by actors led to nominal change. We focus on understanding how actors sought to enact sustainable development initiatives in the face of an unresponsive context, that is, in a context characterized by pressures to maintain the status quo. We show how actors’ attempts to embed sustainable development (...) practices into the university represent a dynamic process, characterized by periods of persistence and suspension. Our theorizing reveals that actors used three coping mechanisms to maintain focus on their sustainability goals: community building, resourcefulness, and vision. By emphasizing these dimensions of their initiatives, actors’ emotional response is focused on encouragement and hope to persist in a context that is largely unresponsive to sustainable development. Our study contributes to the sustainability literature by explicating how actors develop resilience in their efforts to pursue sustainable development in unresponsive contexts. (shrink)

This edited volume evaluates how sport organizations in the public, private, and non-profit sectors define responsible management and sustainability and what these mean in their daily operations. Using country-specific cases, the chapters provide an empirical investigation of sport organizations in each sector, analyzing managerial decisions and policies through a sustainability lens. All chapters are structured in the same way, providing a truly comparative approach. Offering insights for scholars interested in responsibility and sustainability in different context, this volume will be important (...) to undergraduate and postgraduate sport management, event management, sport science, and sport study programs around the globe. (shrink)

This book develops the term 'Sustainable Innovations' and defines it on the basis of plant variety innovations that, by their very nature, (i) permit the in situ conservation of agrobiodiversity and genetic variability in diverse geographic and climatic conditions, (ii) do not exclude any potential innovators from the process of innovation, and thereby (iii) ensure that both formal and informal innovations can continue to take place in the generations to come (in both the developed and developing world). The (...) book studies the Indian Plant Variety Protection Act, the UPOV Acts and associated agricultural policies from a legal, philosophical, historical and economic perspective with the aim of determining the means of promoting sustainable innovations in plant varieties and identifying laws, policies and practices that are currently acting as impediments to promoting the same. (shrink)

Sustainability is concerned with the issues around the ongoing and mutual preservation of both society and the environment. It is a widely used term and supposed goal for many governments but it is also easily misunderstood. Sustainability: The Basics offers an accessible and interdisciplinary introduction to the concept, and discusses key questions such as: How do we decide who or what should be sustained? How can we ensure that the world's resources are distributed fairly? What lessons can we learn (...) from the collapse of previous civilizations? Sustainability studies is in a position to ask some of the most interesting questions about human purpose, identity, modernity, ethics, and the nature of "progress". This book is an ideal starting point for anyone who wants to know more about we can 'hold up' civilization, humanity, and the world we live in. (shrink)

The core goal of this study is to empirically investigate whether there is a “world price” of corporate sustainability. This is assessed in the context of standard asset pricing models—in particular, by asking whether a risk premium attaches to a sustainability factor after controlling for the Fama–French factors. Both time-series and cross-sectional tests are formulated and applied. The results show that (1) global Fama–French factors have strong power to explain global equity returns and (2) sustainability investments have no significant (...) impact on global equity returns. The absence of a significant relationship between sustainability and returns implies that large institutional investors are free to implement sustainability mandates without fear of breaching their fiduciary duties from realising negative returns due to incorporating a sustainability investment process. (shrink)

Current conceptualizations of environmental responsibility follow a human-centered approach wherein the natural environment is seen as instrumental to human ends. Environmental responsibility, in this context, emerges primarily as the preservation and sustenance of nature in a manner that would limit waste, enhance the aesthetic and spiritual value of nature, and confer psychological and economic rewards upon individuals and businesses that follow a sustainable course of interaction with nature. In contrast, this paper advances an ecocentric approach to sustainable living (...) that ensures the dialectic between human systems and natural and technical systems by explicitly recognizing nature as central to survival and progress. Environmental responsibility within this approach is viewed to be multilateral and institutional rather than merely as moral responsibility of business or of governments. (shrink)

Sustainable Entrepreneurship stands for a business driven concept of sustainability which focusses on increasing both social as well as business value - so called Shared Value. This book shows why and how this unique concept has the potential to become the most recognised strategic management approach in our times. It aims to point out the opportunities that arise from putting sustainable entrepreneurship into practice. At the same time, this book is a wake-up call for all those companies and (...) decision makers who underestimated Sustainable Entrepreneurship before or who are simply not aware of its greater dimension. Well structured chapters from different academic and business perspectives clearly outline how Sustainable Entrepreneurship contributes to solving the world's most challenging problems, such as Climate Change, Finance Crisis and Political Uncertainty, as well as to ensuring business success. The book provides a framework of orientation where the journey might go: What can a successful concept of SE look like? What are the key drivers for its realisation? What is the role of business in shaping the future of our society? The book also presents best practices and provides unique learnings as well as business insights from the international Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award (www.se-award.org). The Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award (short SEA) is an award for companies today who are thinking about tomorrow by making sustainable business practices an integral part of their corporate culture. Companies that receive the SEA are being recognised for the vision they have shown in combining economic and sustainable responsibility. (shrink)

Earth’s life-support system is facing megaproblems of sustainability. One important way of how these problems can be addressed is through innovation. This paper argues that responsible innovation that contributes to sustainable development consists of three dimensions: innovations avoid harming people and the planet, innovations ‘do good’ by offering new products, services, or technologies that foster SD, and global governance schemes are in place that facilitate innovations that avoid harm and ‘do good.’ The paper discusses global governance schemes based on (...) deliberation as a means to foster such responsible innovation. These schemes can provide voluntary soft-law regulations that complement and extend national and international hard-law regulations and facilitate collective innovation that contributes to SD goals. The article addresses the facilitative role of governments and international organizations in overcoming problems of deliberation and offers illustrative examples of such governance schemes. (shrink)