Environmental Sustainability and Sustainable Growth: A Global Outlook

As countries strive for rapid economic growth, they tend to initiate substantive environmental degradation. This on a wider and sustained scale leads to global warming, pollution and health risks. On the other hand countries that have stringent policies against exploitation of natural resources may experience job losses and slower economic growth. Surely there must be a balance somewhere but who should take responsibility for striking that balance? It's a blame game. Developing countries blame the developed ones while the developed countries blame the developing countries for unbridled exploitation of nature resulting in biological and environmental imbalance. But there is good news. The world is beginning to understand the need for some form of action. There is already a broad international agreement on what should be done and a few countries have started taking steps towards striking a balance between economic growth and the environment. This book focuses on how leaders can push the effort towards the balance for the good of the earth and the human society. Without a good balance between the environment and economic growth, our civilization may be headed for a collapse.