From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security (Global Environmental Accord: Strategies for Sustainability and Institutional Innovation): Exploring New Limits to Growth - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262661896 ISBN 13: 9780262661898

Publisher: MIT Press, 2005

Synopsis

From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security revisits the findings of The Global 2000 Report to the President -- commissioned by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 -- and presents an up-to-date overview, informed by the earlier projections, of such critical topics as population, water, food, energy, climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity. It examines current environmental trends in order to consider the state of the global environment over the next thirty years and discusses what can be done now to achieve ecological security.

The authors of From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security find that the world population will likely continue to level off, but the population decline in many industrialized countries will create new socioeconomic and political problems -- including the "reverse demographic shock" of disproportionately large aging populations. Although world food production is likely to increase at a rate that keeps up with population growth, greater demand in China as well as distributional issues will keep significant numbers of people malnourished. In addition to these continuing scarcity issues, ecological insecurity may increase because of new threats that include global warming, loss of biodiversity, bioinvasion, and the rapid worldwide growth of new diseases. The book not only analyzes the nature of these impending problems but suggests ways to solve them.

About this title

About the Author

Ken Cousins is a doctoral student at the University of Maryland.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262661896
• ISBN 13: 9780262661898
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 284
• Editor: Pirages Dennis, Mehler Jacques