Publisher's Synopsis
This book is designed to help bridge the gap between ability to cause change and capacity to manage it to enable managers to meet the new challenges of sustainability. If humans are to try to manage their impacts on the planet, they need a greatly improved knowledge base to do so. This must begin with general ecological literacy for managers, including enhanced understanding of humanplanet relationships. Ecological literacy is becoming a necessary skill for today's managers. The book is aimed at promoting this type of understanding; it is a primer of skills and knowledge relevant to the goals of sustainable development. On common ground explores the interconnected nature of Earth systems and highlights the emerging challenges to managers in that context. An ecosphere perspective on management will involve modifying many of our planning and decision-making processes, our institutions and institutional links, even our value systems, to permit effective integration of ecological, economic, and social objectives. The anagement of human demands, modification of human behavior, and mitigation of human impact on the environment must become the central themes of sustainable environmental management. We must integrate and incorporate this new perceptive. -
