Toward A New Paradigm Of Sustainable Development

The Partnership for Growth (PfG) is one of the first experiments to operationalize the Obama administration’s strategy to bring greater programmatic coherence to U.S. trade and development initiatives in four countries—The Philippines, El Salvador, Ghana, and Tanzania. A key goal was to reinforce a country-led approach, but to also bring to the development table the considerably deeper pockets of non-aid actors, as well as what they are best at bringing—the jobs, training, new businesses, domestic supply chain, and market linkages that are the fundamental ingredients of any sustainable development strategy. This report argues that PfG began the paradigm shift toward a more coordinated and sustainable development strategy by highlighting the benefits of strategic coordination across agencies at the front end of an initiative. It also brought to light the difficulty of using development resources and tools to attract non-aid actors with what is still basically a government-to-government approach to development.

International businesses struggle to be competitive and influential at the global market level. With the new ideas in the management and leadership disciplines, hard skills are losing or are believed to be losing their strategic relevance while soft skills are praised and highly sought after. The Handbook of Research on International Business and Models for Global Purpose-Driven Companies, a pivotal reference source, provides vital research on international business management strategies and applications within internal organizations that allow companies to strategically position themselves for increased success in the global economy. While highlighting topics such as organizational culture, internal communication, and generational workforce, this publication explores leadership disciplines as well as the methods of handling multicultural organizations. This book is ideally designed for entrepreneurs, executives, managers, business professionals, human resource officials, researchers, academicians, and students.

On a historical global turning point, this book offers a thorough exploration of the “New Sustainability Paradigm”, originally developed by the Global Scenario Group (GSG) of the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) as a starting point for analyzing real-life transitions and transformations. 11 contributors from 5 continents present detailed analyses of economic and political transitions in Western and Eastern Europe, the USA, the Middle East, and in Asia, discussing the role of different players in the implementation of the New Sustainability Paradigm. Part I offers an overview of the six scenarios developed by the GSG and a short discussion of significant papers published by the Great Transition Initiative (GTI) of the Tellus Institute. Next come examples of dramatic historical and current transitions in Western Europe, the USA, Eastern Europe, the Middle East (Arabian Spring), and Asia, as well as an analysis of the potential of humankind to manage a great transition to the new sustainability paradigm. Subsequent chapters highlight the role of culture and education and review the role of different players for the implementation of the new sustainability paradigm. The focus of Part II is on the ecological pillar of Sustainability. The discussion includes urgent ecological problems including climate engineering, eco-criminality, bioterrorism, biodiversity protection, water, energy, and food security. Part III deals with needed innovations in sustainable waste management and sustainable city architecture, especially big cities in developing and threshold countries, where a significant part of the world population is concentrated. The fourth and final section offers an analysis of insights developed throughout the book, and outlines recommendations for the implementation of the New Sustainability Paradigm by civil society, grass-root movements, scholars, politically neutral NGOs, sincere media players, and by open-minded and enlightened politicians to manage and steer the Great Transition towards sustainable global democracy.

Drawing on the movements of corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing and sustainable development, this title examines the making of financial reality towards social responsibility and sustainability, and offers an understanding of finance as a collective construct and endeavour embedded in societal context.

This volume critiques the current model of the creative economy, and considers alternative models that may point to greener, cleaner, more sustainable and socially just cultural and creative industries. Aimed at the nexus of cultural and environmental concerns, the book assesses the ways in which arts and cultural activities can help develop ideas of the ‘good life’ beyond excessive and unsustainable material consumption, and explores the complex interactions between cultural prosperity, place and the quality (and availability) of employment, leisure and the rights to self-expression. Adopting a deliberately wide and inclusive interdisciplinary and international perspective, contributors to this volume showcase current and future ways of ‘doing’ creative economy, ecologically, otherwise and differently. In 11 chapters, the book outlines some of the most relevant arguments from among the growing literature that critically analyzes the current creative economy, with a focus on issues of gentrification, inequality and environment. This volume is timely, as it emerges into a political and economic context that is seeking desperately to ‘reboot’ the economy, re-establish ‘business as usual’ and to do so partly through significant investment and expansion in the creative economy. The book will be suitable for upper level undergraduates and postgraduates studying a wide range of topics, including: cultural and creative industries, media and communications, cultural studies, cultural policy, human geography, environmental humanities and environmental policy, and will be of further interest to arts professionals, creative economy researchers and policymakers. The chapter “Towards a New Paradigm of the Creative City or the Same Devil in Disguise? Culture-led Urban (Re)development and Sustainability” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Most Asian cities have grown more congested, more sprawling, and less livable in recent years; and statistics suggest that this trend will continue. Rather than mitigate the problems, transport policies have often exacerbated them. In this book, the Asian Development Bank outlines a new paradigm for sustainable urban transport that gives Asian cities a workable, step-by-step blueprint for reversing the trend and moving toward safer, cleaner, more sustainable cities, and a better quality of urban life.