Global Sustainability Initiatives

New Models and New Approaches

Edited by:
James A.F. Stoner, Fordham University
Charles Wankel, St. John's University, New York

Published 2008

The journey towards a sustainable world is our greatest challenge. This book includes reports, analysis, and discussion of cutting-edge approaches to incorporating sustainability importantly in the mix of organizational strategic elements. It includes examples of “zero-footprint” production facilities, leveraging environmental and social opportunities by projects, examining theories of excellence in sustainability through appreciative inquiry, social entrepreneurship, closed-loop supply chain management including reverse flows of products returned by end users, using triple bottom-line measures of success implemented in various societal and political contexts, implementing environmentally positive green technologies, new visions for making sustainability sustainable, and innovations in diffusing learning throughout an organization’s web of stakeholders and admirers. Examples and cases are drawn from business, government, and not-for-profit sectors and intra and inter-sectoral partnerships in the US, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, and Spain. Notable focal cases include the airline industry, with its emerging space-rich aerotropolises as potentially sustainable communities and higher education.
These are at times supported by interviews that bring into focus positive learning experiences and high-point stories.

CONTENTS
PART I: EMERGING MODELS FOR MOVING TOWARD GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY. Introduction: Exploring Issues, Ideas, and Approaches for Moving Toward a Sustainable World, James A.F. Stoner and Charles Wankel. Evergreen Brick Works: Planning for Success in a Triple, Bottom-Line Enterprise, Ushnish Sengupta, Geoff Cape, Seana Irvine, Pierre Bertrand, and Ann Armstrong. Hitting Four Birds With One Stone: The Rural Electrification Project for Peace in the Island of the al-Qaeda Front in East Asia, Mari Kondo. Learning to Cooperate: A Model at the Nexus of Business and Society and its Impact Around the World, Bonnie Richley. PART II: BUILDING BUSINESS AND UNIVERSITY SUPPORT FOR GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY INITIATIVES. Convergence of For-Profit and Not-For-Profit Organizational Practces for Global Sustainability and Financial Success, Martin Stack, Laura Fitzpatrick, and Tim Keane. What Is Sustaining Practice? How Is it Learned? Jenni Goricanec and Roger Hadgraft. PART III: CHANGING PRACTICES, PROCESSES, AND SYSTEMS: CONCEPTS, INITIATIVES, SUCCESSES, AND DISAPPOINTMENTS. Transport Sustainability and the Airport City, Michael B. Charles and Paul H. Barnes. Sustainable Aviation: Challenges and Solutions in a Carbon Constrained World, Dawna L. Rhoades. Closed-Loop Supply Chain Management for Global Sustainability, Matthew J. Drake and Mark E. Ferguson. Construction and Demolition Debris Recycling for Sustainable Local Economic Development, Lynn M. Patterson. Wrestling With the Hard Realities—Unintended Consequenses and Disappointing Outcomes in a U.K. Water Project, Sam Wong. About the Authors.