An Introduction to Sustainable Development presents the concept and practice of sustainable development as a process that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This textbook examines the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainable development by focusing on changing patterns of consumption, production, and distribution of resources.

The impact of globalization and the role of the private sector including multinational corporations are discussed. Case materials include domestic and international initiatives and projects; protection of coastal wetlands; development of community-based water supply and sanitation systems; sustainable energy, forest, and industrial development.

Pressures of population growth, rapid urbanization, industrialization, and stress on natural resources provide new challenges to the Asian Development Bank as it strives to set forth environmental issues as an important element of sustainable economic development in the Asian and Pacific region. While the Bank can provide policy and technical guidance, the governments themselves must take the lead in providing the resources and policies needed to address effectively the rapidly changing environmental condition. How we measure the effectiveness of governmental performance in meeting the environmental challenge in Asia and the Pacific is the subject of this book.

By drawing on experiences in six Asian and Pacific countries, the authors have developed a series of methodological tools to assist others in assessing the environmental quality of air, water, soil, and biological diversity in developing countries. These tools can then be used to determine the financial resources needed to achieve the quality of life characteristic of a sustainable development path.

In October of 1992, the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies sponsored the Roger Revelle Memorial Symposium on Population and Environment. Two dozen eminent scientists—all friends, colleagues, or students of Roger Revelle—presented papers in a broad range of disciplines that reflect the remarkable scope of Revelle’s professional and academic contributions during his lifetime. This volume is a selection of the symposium papers.

A memoir of Revelle’s exposure to poverty in Pakistan, igniting his interest in the contribution that science could make to improving the lives of people in developing countries, serves as a moving introduction to the volume. This book stands as an enduring memorial to Roger Revelle’s lifelong concern that scientific developments contribute to comfortable, civilized survival in all countries of this increasingly crowded world.

This set of eleven essays addresses the tightening water resource problems of the Arab region’s twenty countries. The authors discuss themes of water conflict and provide detailed looks at four sub-areas: the Maghreb, the Nile countries, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Mashrek.

This century has seen a technological drive to enlarge traditional surface and groundwater supplies and to expand irrigated farming for rapidly growing and progressively more prosperous populations. But now the region is facing absolute limits on its fresh water. Water in the Arab World focuses on today’s need to move toward rationalized new patterns of using water within the national economies, a transition often described as moving from supply to demand management. The change calls for intensified national legislative and planning efforts concerning water, with serious consideration of desalination and conservation, as well as of pricing and market approaches to the allocation of a very constrained supply.