For around 20 years, the sustainability concept and its implementation have been discussed by society at large (Kobiowu et al., 2005; Goldblatt, 2005; Marechal et al., 2005; Backstrand, 2006; Spangenberg, 2005) and, among others, by the green economics community (Lunn, 2006; Kennet and Heinemann, 2006b; Dobson and Bell,...

This paper discusses the policy uses, and limits, of three key concepts for defining 'environmentally adjusted' macro-economic indicators for a national economy. The first is change in the system boundary, an enlargement of the scope of national economic accounting to include natural assets;...

Since its genesis (Bertanlanffy, 1968), the concept 'system' became an essential tool used by many disciplines, such as Economy and Ecology. Nowadays it can be considered a central concept in sustainable development analysis. However, science and sustainable development analysis has mainly...

The notion of common good is not clearly defined. Globalisation as well as sustainable development refers to it. This paper recalls four main objections to globalisation, namely institutional contextualisation, experience from economic history, equity issues, and other normative assessments. It...

The purpose of this article is to test whether the monetary valuation of environmental assets is sufficient to define a sustainable management of natural resources. This discussion is based on a one-year field experience in East Cameroon, one of the aims of which was to question the validity of...

The purpose of the Activities Implemented Jointly (AIJ) programme is to foster the transfer of technology for global warming abatement from developed to developing countries. Projects should not only reduce greenhouse gases, but also contribute to the sustainable development goals of host...

This paper attempts to make the connection between the theory of sustainability and the practice of urban design. In doing so it draws from a wide body of literature to establish ten universal principles of sustainable urban design. These it relates to some of the widely accepted precepts of...

An optimisation methodology is applied on the islands of Kephalonia and Ithaca (Prefecture of Kephalonia) in Greece, where various Renewable Energy Sources (RES) can be found and could be exploited to satisfy part of their energy needs. These resources are examined and a case study is performed...

Fundamental to policies of sustainable development is the assumption that values will not depreciate through time. This assumption is inconsistent with the economic approach to policy-making. Economic analysis, by interpreting social values in terms of money, necessarily discounts values in the...

An 'Environmental Diamond' for the Levant is proposed, similar to the World Bank's 'Development Diamond'. It would serve as a framework for evaluating ecosystem risk for the countries in the Jordan Basin that are currently facing a sustainability crisis. The approach followed by this paper was...