Environment and Sustainability

In this timely book, Ed Atkins asks: are we getting decarbonisation right? And how could it be made better for people and communities? In doing so, this book proposes a different type of energy transition. One that prioritises and takes opportunities to do better – to provide better jobs, community ownership and improve people’s homes and lives.

With Agenda 2030, the UN adopted wide-ranging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that integrate development and environmental agendas. This book has a unique focus on the political tensions between environmental and socio-economic objectives and advocates for a cooperative shift towards environmentally sound sustainability.

Using an international and multi-disciplinary approach, this book provides a timely overview of the current issues in environmentalism and social policy. It explores many current debates, including: cities, housing and transport; citizenship and care; employment and green jobs; environmental governance and legislation; and globalisation.

Spanning multiple countries across South America, Europe and Africa, this book uses an international comparative perspective to investigate the phenomenon of self-building for low- and middle-income groups in urban areas, examining the tensions between regulation and self-regulatory initiatives.

Hope must be mixed with realism in our approach to the climate emergency, and in this book philosopher John Foster presents a revolutionary approach to our pressing need for a habitable human future.

Critically analysing how waste is currently configured as a ‘household’ issue, this book illuminates the implications of these framings and how public sociology can engage critical publics to reorient waste as a global socio-ethical issue.

This topical book offers an analysis of the current state of the planning system in England and an evidence-based review of over a decade of change. With a critique of ongoing UK planning reforms, the book argues that the planning system is often blamed for a range of issues that are in fact the fault of ineffective policymaking.

Matthew Quinn plots a landmark reimagination of governance and public administration, underpinned by sustainable development and civic republicanism.

Examining the root causes of the global waste problem, this book challenges existing policies, highlighting what needs to change if we are to get serious in tackling this global problem. It concludes with policy implications for shifting waste from an ‘end-of-pipe’ concern to being at the heart of the debate over decarbonisation.

Exploring the impact of climate change and the pandemic on people’s decisions to form families and their experience of having children, this book makes a valuable contribution to debates on contemporary planetary crises.

Focusing on material and social forms of infrastructure, this edited collection focuses on cities across the global North and South. Considering public health crises and climate change, the book argues that paying attention to infrastructures’ past, present and future allows us to understand and respond to the current urban condition.

Drawing on international case studies from emerging economies and developing countries including South Africa, India, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, Indonesia, China and Russia, this book examines the rise, nature and effectiveness of recent developments in social policy in the Global South.