Sustainability: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives

The sustainability concept is inherently multydisciplinary because it concerns the management of a complex system having economic, technological, ecological, political, and other perspectives. Consequently, any effort in the area of sustainability involves concept, principles, and methods from engineering, the social science including economics ans social psychology, the biological science including ecology, and physical sciences. In this context, the book Sustainability:Multi Disciplinary Perspectives edited by Heriberto Cabezas and Urmila Diwekar discusses, in a coherent and comprehensive manner, the salient concepts, principles and methods relevant to sustainability from the perspective of different disciplines. The book is a collection of fourteen papers, written by 23 authors drawn from fifteen distinct disciplinary backgrounds ranging from engineering to public policy, from ecology to thermodynamics, from organizational behavior to social psychology, and from industrial ecology to economics. Chapter 1, Introduction, by Heriberto Cabezas describes the general context, the aims and structure of the book. This chapter also provides the definition of sustainability: Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs . Chapter 2, Principles of Sustainability from Ecology, by Audrey L. Mayer, details what are the principles which support sustainability: resilience, desirability, temporal and spatial equity. Ecological theories and hypotheses have inspired new and creative ways to create more sustainable systems. In particular, the complex systems approach to understanding ecosystems have readily incorporated linked human systems into these models, and allowed for a greater understanding of the impacts of specific human activities on the entire socioecological system. ...