Chapter 17 - Challenges and opportunities at the crossroads of Environmental Sustainability and Economy research

Abstract

Cities occupy only nearly 3% of the world's land surface. However, they account for over 75% of global natural resource consumption and contribute to about 70% of greenhouse gas emissions (UNEP International Resource Panel). Thus, human activities in cities are drivers of multiple environmental challenges, which are likely to increase with an expected rise of the global urban population by 70%–80% by 2050, and their effects extend over all the ecosystems of the world. Cities are human ecosystems where social, economic, biological, and ecological components work together forming a system of feedback loops and interactions. These interactions in urban ecosystems are guided through human values, agency, and perceptions. An ecological understanding of cities can help conceptualize them as key socioeconomic and environmental “nodes” where great potential exists for sustainability-oriented innovations in resource management and the mitigation of pollutant emissions, climate change, and other negative externalities of resource consumption. For several decades now, the need for sustainable development has emerged across different systems working in human societies on a global level. However, the challenge remains to integrate the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability. The focus of this chapter is to read environmental sustainability through a socioeconomic lens. In this context, the transition to innovative socioeconomic models and “metabolic” approaches has been explored here, learning from main insights from the chapters in this book.