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"Sustainable development is the holy Grail of governments and leaders but has remained elusive and undefined. Wellbeing of Nations provides the diagnostics to turn sustainability intoreality. This is the ultimate travel guide to a sustainable future." Jose Maria Figueres Former President of Costa RicaWorld Economic Foru.

"At long last, a real metric for measuring sustainability and wellbeing. It provides a way to chart a better future. The cornerstone of any working library on environment, development, and quality of life. A volume without peer." Thomas E. Lovejoy Chief Biodiversity Advisor The World Ban.

The use of indicators to gauge human progress is common and well understood; Gross Domestic Product and the Index of Leading Economic Indicators are two well-known examples. Yet most of the widely cited indicators focus exclusively on economic activity, and even the most progressive of indicators fail to account for key issues of sustainability. The Wellbeing of Nations addresses that shortcoming by combining indicators of human well-being with those of environmental stability to generate a more comprehensive picture of the state of our world.

The author combines 39 indicators of health, population, wealth, education, communication, freedom, peace, crime, and equity in to a Human Wellbeing Index, and 39 indicators of land health, protected areas, water quality, water supply, global atmosphere, air quality, species diversity, energy use, and resource pressures into an Ecosystem Wellbeing Index. The two indexes are then combined into a Wellbeing/Stress Index that measures how much human wellbeing each country obtains for the amount of stress it places on the environment. Seventy color-coded geopolitical maps vividly portray the performance of each of the 180 nations for all indexes, and the main indicators that go into them. In addition, all data are given in 160 pages of tables, and the highly accessible methodology is described in appendices so that readers can undertake their own assessments.

Produced in collaboration with the leading international organizations involved with sustainable development, The Wellbeing of Nations is a one-of-a-kind reference for development and environmental policy professionals, as well as for students and scholars in environmental studies, international studies, and international development. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Superb Methodology
The methodology that Mr. Prescott-Allen uses is the best that I have found.By measuring environmental and social indicators separately and plotting them together on a two axis chart, the author demonstrates an interplay between the environment and society that is commonly lost in single axis indices.

This is an excellent learning tool.It is my hope that this data set will be re-calculated on an annual basis to provide the best possible measurement for the success or failure of sustainable development efforts. ... Read more

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Current environmental catastrophes and concerns have been accompanied by an explosion of information about the environment. The concerned citizen, whether a business professional, student, homemaker, government employee, educator, or union member, needs access to this information, but may feel overwhelmed by the bewildering array of material available. This annotated bibliography guides readers through the vast amount of information about the environment currently available. It answers questions about usefulness, subject matter and approach of environmental literature. More than 800 entries on books and popular magazine articles found in most public libraries list standard bibliographic information and its scope, organisation and bias. Notations mention whether tables, figures, graphs, glossaries, reference lists or summaries are particularly noteworthy. The overall scientific level of the work is also addressed. Focus is on timely and informative books and articles that are readily available and understandable to the general public.Subjects covered include overpopulation, air pollution, acid rain, ozone depletion, global warming, the greenhouse effect, water pollution, toxic waste, energy and resource depletion, pesticides, food additives and other chemicals, land mismanagement, noise pollution, visual pollution, pollution of outer space and health problems in the environment, as well as practical suggestions for improving the environment. ... Read more

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Earth Works is the only comprehensive guide available to thebest new and classic books about nature and the environment for adultsand YAs. It provides descriptive entries for trade nonfiction andscholarly or technical books, and a significant number of fictiontitles which are of interest to both the general public andspecialists. Each chapter defines its scope, then identifies key booksor authors, and refers to notable related works in other chapters. ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Atmospheric Environment, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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The main aim of this work is to assess the performance of the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) on board the Earth Probe satellite aerosol index (AI) version 8.0 retrieved from the daily measurements of the TOMS instrument as an indicator of the presence of absorbing aerosols in the atmosphere. The analysis is carried out over the region of Northern Greece, an area exposed to various aerosol types from different sources. The aerosol optical depth (AOD) measured by a Brewer spectroradiometer situated in the centre of the city of Thessaloniki, at 40.6^oN, 22.9^oE, was employed as a measure of the aerosol loading in the atmosphere during the Earth Probe overpass. Discrete aerosol episodes that affect the area, such as biomass burning and Saharan dust events, have been isolated and studied in order to assess the effectiveness of using the TOMS AI in this highly complex atmospheric environment. The yearly values for the AOD measured at 355nm range from 0.03 to 1.97 with a mean of 0.58+/-0.32 and for the AI from -1.67 to 3.06, with a mean of 0.22+/-0.73. This wide range of values results from the co-existence of urban, continental, marine and dust aerosols over Thessaloniki, a fact that makes it complicated to segregate optical effects on the observed radiation depending on different aerosol types. A total of 223 biomass burning events that affected Thessaloniki showed a correlation of 0.67 between the AOD and AI values whereas a correlation of 0.57 was deduced for the 37 cases of Saharan dust loading. A cluster analysis on the back-trajectories was performed in order to study the origins of the air masses over Thessaloniki, which permitted that the optical depth and AI were analysed depending on the possible source of the aerosols. The highest AOD values coupled with the highest AI values were seen for trajectories that transport air from the Saharan desert over Thessaloniki and those that bring polluted air from Eastern Europe and the Balkan regions. Even though some deductions were made vis-a-vis the origin and importance of different aerosol types over the city corroborating the usefulness of the AI in climatological or global climate studies, auxiliary information is essential for studying in detail the effects of the atmospheric aerosol loading over a local point of interest. ... Read more

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Containing essential legislation and guidance for the building and construction industry, these building regulations apply to most new buildings in England and Wales, (including extensions and alterations) and also to change of use. Each document describes how to meet health and safety requirements for the building's users, and regulations that promote energy efficiency and disabled access. ... Read more

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"Libraries with large environmental collections will want this unique introduction to a multidisciplinary and popular topic. It includes more than 1,600 sources of information: reference books, periodicals, reports, proceedings, databases, libraries, associations, research centers, and audiovisual materials." Choice ... Read more

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Aviation is the activity involving man-made air-borne flying devices (aircraft), including the people, organizations, and regulatory bodies involved with them. ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Atmospheric Environment, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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An air pollution index (API) reporting system is introduced to selected cities of China for public communication on air quality data. Shanghai is the first city in China providing daily average API reports and forecasts. This paper describes the development of an artificial neural network (ANN) model for the API forecasting in Shanghai. It is a multiple layer perceptron (MLP) network, with meteorological forecasting data as the main input, to output the next day average API values. However, the initial version of the MLP model did not work well. To improve the model, a series of tests were conducted with respect to the training method and structure optimization. Based on the test results, the training algorithm was modified and a new model was built. The new model is now being used in Shanghai for API forecasting. Its performance is shown reasonably well in comparison with observation. The application of the old model was only weakly correlated with observation. In 1-year application, the correlation coefficients were 0.2314, 0.1022 and 0.1710 for TSP, SO"2 and NO"x, respectively. But for the new model, for over 8 months application, the correlation coefficients are raised to 0.6056, 0.6993 and 0.6300 for PM"1"0, SO"2, and NO"2. Further, the new algorithm does not rely on manpower intervention so that it is now being applied in several other Chinese cities with quite different meteorological conditions. The structure of the model and the application results are presented in this paper and also the problems to be further studied. ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Science of the Total Environment, The, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Spatial analysis (1994-2001) and temporal trends (1980-2000) for particulate-associated metals at key stations in the Seine River Basin have been determined using a new metal pollution index (MPI). The MPI is based on the concentrations of Cd, Cu, Hg, Pb and Zn, normalized to calculated background levels estimated for each particulate matter samples for four fractions (clays and other aluminosilicates, carbonates, organic matter, and quartz). Background levels ascribed to each fraction were determined from a specific set of samples collected from relatively pristine areas in the upper Seine basin and validated on prehistoric samples. The unitless MPI is designed to vary between 0 for pristine samples to 100 for the ones extremely impacted by human activities and to assess the trends of general metal contamination and its mapping. Throughout the Seine basin, MPI currently range from 1 to 40, but values exceeding 100 have been found in periurban streams and the Eure tributary. Based on the MPI spatial distribution, the Seine River Basin displays a wide range of anthropogenic impacts linked to variations in population density, stream order, wastewater discharges and industrial activities. Correlations between the MPI and other trace elements indicate that anthropogenic impacts also strongly affect the concentrations of Ag, Sb, and P, marginally affect the concentrations of Ba, Ni, and Cr, and appear to have little effect on the concentrations of Li, Be, V, Co, and the major elements. Temporal MPI trends can also be reconstituted from past regulatory surveys. In the early 1980s, MPI were 2-5 times higher than nowadays at most locations, particularly downstream of Greater Paris where it reached levels as high as 250 (now 40), a value characteristic of present Paris urban sewage. The exceptional contamination of the Seine basin is gradually improving over the last 20 years but remains very high. ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Forest Ecology and Management, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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The crown illumination index (CII) is an ordinal scale frequently used to qualitatively assess the light environment within a forest. Although this method provides a simple and rapid approach, it can be subjective and needs to be calibrated against quantitative measurements of canopy structure. A study was undertaken in north-western Amazonia to provide a means to calibrate the CII in tropical forests. Hemispherical photographs were taken to represent each CII class, which were then analysed using HemiView 2.1 software in order to calculate light availability factors. The proportion of visible sky and indirect, direct and global site factors (the proportion of indirect, direct and total radiation reaching a point, compared to an open location) were all found to correlate strongly with CII class and therefore offer a viable method for calibration. CII classes could only be weakly defined with respect to leaf area index (LAI), however, and so conversion of CII to LAI or vice versa is problematic. The results of this study provide a quantified description of each index class, significantly improving interpretation of the crown illumination index. ... Read more