The Long Road to Sustainability The Past, Present, and Future of International Environmental Law and Policy

Description

• Author(s)
  Alexander Gillespie
• Publisher
  OUP Oxford
• Format
  PDF
• Print ISBN
  9780198819516, 019881951X
• eText ISBN
  9780198819516, 019881951X
• Edition
• Copyright
• Details
  For the last few thousand years, humanity has struggled to achieve sustainable development. Gillespie sees the problem as multi-faceted: a three legged stool of economic, social, and environmental conundrums have stalled the quest for the long term viability of both our species and the ecosystems in which we reside. Gillespie moves from the low life expectancy, excessive deforestation, and wetland drainage of the medieval period, through the species loss, coal burning, free trade, and poor waste management of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to the more recent concerns of climate change, unsustainable fisheries, and chemical pollutants. By delivering a comprehensive examination of human survival over the past millennium, Gillespie illustrates that the challenges we face are not new – that we now have the means to counter them, is.