Fair Future: Resource Conflicts, Security, and Global Justice

'The world has enough for everyone's needs, but not enough for everyone's greed.' Mahatma Gandhi

Oil crisis, water conflicts, declining food security - we hear one report after another about resource scarcity - while with growing populations and huge poverty, nations are demanding their right to development. In the age of globalization this right cannot be disputed, yet the planet is already exhibiting signs of acute environmental stress. Indians want more roads and Chinese more oil: the struggle over nature will partly shape the crises of the twenty-first century. Clashes over resources, both major and minor, are often the unseen factor behind chaos and violence and it is vital to start thinking about how the distribution of resources can be made more just.

This book, written by specialists from the internationally renowned Wuppertal Institute, provides an account of what is involved in the resource conflicts of today and tomorrow. It puts forwards perspectives for resource justice and outlines a global economic and environmental policy equally committed to nature and to humanity.

This new work, rich in analysis and information, offers a compass to anyone looking for ways in which global society might face the challenge of the future.

Wolfgang Sachs is an author and research director at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, in Germany. He has been chair of the board of Greenpeace Germany, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and is a member of the Club of Rome. Amongst the various appointments he has held are co-editor of the Society for International Development's journal Development; visiting professor of science, technology and society at Pennsylvania State University and fellow at the Institute for Cultural Studies in Essen. He regularly teaches at Schumacher College and as Honorary Professor at the University of Kassel.

Wolfgang Sachs's first English book, For Love of the Automobile: Looking Back into the History of Our Desires, was published by the University of California Press in 1992. Several of his works have been published by Zed Books. They include the immensely influential Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power (edited, 1992), which has since been translated into numerous languages; Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict (edited, 1993); Greening the North: A Post-Industrial Blueprint for Ecology and Equity (co-authored with Reinhard Loske and Manfred Linz, 1998); Planet Dialectics: Explorations in Environment and Development (1999) and (with T. Santarius et al) Fair Future: Resource Conflicts, Security, and Global Justice (2007).