WBCSD Report on Eco-efficient Leadership

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development published a report in 1996 on Eco-efficient Leadership for Improved Economic and Environmental Performance. I have decided to review this report for my second book report. The WBCSD describes eco-efficiency as linking “the goals of business excellence and environmental excellence, by creating the bridge through which corporate behavior [...]

Green Politics

Green Politics by Anil Agarwal, Sunita Narain and Anju Sharma is perhaps one of those few books which talks about the stance of developing countries when it comes to global environmental negotiations. The developing countries have always come across as skeptics when it comes to global environmental negotiations and their reasons can be fairly justified. [...]

It’s the economics stupid!

Sometime in the past few years the battle over the science of climate change was won. A few contrarian dead-enders remain but the world (read: the US) now accepts that climate change is real, is happening, and is a serious threat to the planet. Despite dire warnings from the scientific community there remains significant political [...]

Global Environmental Diplomacy

Mostafa Tolba describes six instruments whose negotiations are representatives of an international environmental agenda that has evolved since the Stockholm Conference in 1972. The author was close associated with every step of the negotiations and the problems that set upon their establishment. Some lessons learned in earlier negotiations have been useful for the performance of [...]

Earth in the Balance

Earlier this semester, Nancy and I did a review of Al Gore’s book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. In his book, he really stressed the fact that people today are so detached from nature that we view ourselves as a separate entity altogether. He claims that humans are neglecting the idea of [...]

Cradle to Cradle

I have just finished a review for William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s book entitled Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things and wanted to share my thoughts and get some feedback! The main tenet of this book is that Waste=Food. That being said, I focused more on the argument they made in regards to the idea of eco-efficiency [...]

“The Global Deal”, A Need for Change

Nicholas Stern’s, “The Global Deal” argues that we are facing the two greatest problems of our time, overcoming poverty and combating climate change. Therefore, it is essential that we find ways to increase the living standard across all nations while at the same time discovering ways to make living on this earth more sustainable over [...]

Sustainable Development-An Oxymoron?

The idea that a country is developed or underdeveloped is a relatively new concept; although it does have connotations of longstanding terms like ‘savages’ and ‘backwards’. During President Truman’s inaugural address, after World War II, he coined this concept and thus stating to the world that certain cultures were deficient and defective. This implied that [...]

What Kind Of Centrism Underlies "Should Trees Have Standing?"

No one would accuse Christopher Stone’s 1972 discourse-changing article, “Should Trees Have Standing,” of being centrist. The article, which advocated assigning legal rights to animals and inanimate environmental objects, legal rights that could be activated to protect the trees, etcetera, for their own sake and not explicitly in the property interest of humans, was received [...]