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Sustainable Living
Sustainable living describes a lifestyle that attempts to reduce the use of Earth's natural resources by an individual or society. It is referred to as zero wastage living" or "net zero living". Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their ecological footprint (including their carbon footprint) by altering their home designs and methods of transportation, energy consumption and diet. Its proponents aim to conduct their lives in ways that are consistent with sustainability, naturally balanced, and respectful of humanity's symbiotic relationship with the Earth's natural ecology. The practice and general philosophy of ecological living closely follows the overall principles of sustainable development. One approach to sustainable living, exemplified by small-scale urban transition towns and rural ecovillages, seeks to create self-reliant communities based on principles of simple living, which maximize self-sufficiency particularly in food production. These principles, on a broade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lifestyle (sociology)
Lifestyle is the interests, opinions, behaviours, and behavioural orientations of an individual, group, or culture. The term was introduced by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in his 1929 book, ''The Case of Miss R.'', with the meaning of "a person's basic character as established early in childhood". The broader sense of lifestyle as a "way or style of living" has been documented since 1961. Lifestyle is a combination of determining intangible or tangible factors. Tangible factors relate specifically to demographic variables, i.e. an individual's demographic profile, whereas intangible factors concern the psychological aspects of an individual such as personal values, preferences, and outlooks. A rural environment has different lifestyles compared to an urban metropolis. Location is important even within an urban scope. The nature of the neighborhood in which a person resides affects the set of lifestyles available to that person due to differences between various neighborhoods ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Living Villages
Living Villages is an organisation in the United Kingdom established in 1993 as part of The Athena Foundation UK (now dissolved) and as ThLiving Village Trustin 1997 by Carole Salmon and Bob Tomlinson. The objectives are to encourage sustainable development through appropriate design and ethical commercial practice. The first project of five environmentally friendly houses calleBells Courtin Bishops Castle, Shropshire, UK built in 1997 and the 40 house eco-neighbourhood calleThe Wintles also in Bishops Castle, demonstrate that new housing can be eco-friendly, attractive and beneficial to a local community provided that specific set of design principlesis adhered to. Tomlinson and Salmon maintain that sustainability within the built environment is not possible unless the inhabitants feel a connection to the place and enjoy living there. For example, even if a building is highly energy efficient or made from environmentally friendly materials, it cannot be sustainable if it is demo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sustainable Agriculture
Sustainable agriculture is farming in sustainable ways meeting society's present food and textile needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs. It can be based on an understanding of ecosystem services. There are many methods to increase the sustainability of agriculture. When developing agriculture within sustainable food systems, it is important to develop flexible business process and farming practices. Agriculture has an enormous environmental footprint, playing a significant role in causing climate change (food systems are responsible for one third of the anthropogenic GHG emissions), water scarcity, water pollution, land degradation, deforestation and other processes; it is simultaneously causing environmental changes and being impacted by these changes. Sustainable agriculture consists of environment friendly methods of farming that allow the production of crops or livestock without damage to human or natural systems. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sustainable Architecture
Sustainable architecture is architecture that seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings through improved efficiency and moderation in the use of materials, energy, development space and the ecosystem at large. Sustainable architecture uses a conscious approach to energy and ecological conservation in the design of the built environment. The idea of sustainability, or ecological design, is to ensure that our use of presently available resources does not end up having detrimental effects to our collective well-being or making it impossible to obtain resources for other applications in the long run. Background Shift from narrow to broader approach The term "sustainability" in relation to architecture has so far been mostly considered through the lens of building technology and its transformations. Going beyond the technical sphere of "green design", invention and expertise, some scholars are starting to position architecture within a much broader cultura ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appropriate Technology
Appropriate technology is a movement (and its manifestations) encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale, affordable by locals, decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable, and locally autonomous. It was originally articulated as intermediate technology by the economist Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher in his work ''Small Is Beautiful.'' Both Schumacher and many modern-day proponents of appropriate technology also emphasize the technology as people-centered. Appropriate technology has been used to address issues in a wide range of fields. Well-known examples of appropriate technology applications include: bike- and hand-powered water pumps (and other self-powered equipment), the universal nut sheller, self-contained solar lamps and streetlights, and passive solar building designs. Today appropriate technology is often developed using open source principles, which have led to ''open-source appropriate technology'' ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sustainable Design
Environmentally sustainable design (also called environmentally conscious design, eco-design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability and also aimed at improving the health and comfortability of occupants in a building.McLennan, J. F. (2004), The Philosophy of Sustainable Design Sustainable design seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment, the health and well-being of building occupants, thereby improving building performance. The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources, minimize waste, and create healthy, productive environments. Theory The sustainable design intends to "eliminate negative environmental impact through skillful sensitive design". Manifestations of sustainable design require renewable resources and innovation to impact the environment minimally, and connect people with the natural environment. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. However, only about 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Circles Of Sustainability
Circles of Sustainability is a method for understanding and assessing sustainability, and for project management directed towards socially sustainable outcomes. It is intended to handle 'seemingly intractable problems' such as outlined in sustainable development debates. The method is mostly used for cities and urban settlements. The style of the charts themselves could be described as a mixture of radar chart and bar chart. Outline Circles of Sustainability, and its treatment of the social domains of ecology, economics, politics and culture, provides the empirical dimension of an approach called 'engaged theory'. Developing Circles of Sustainability is part of larger project called 'Circles of Social Life', using the same four-domain model to analyze questions of resilience, adaptation, security, reconciliation. It is also being used in relation to thematics such as 'Circles of Child Wellbeing' (with World Vision). As evidenced by Rio+20 and the UN Habitat World Urban Fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carrying Capacities
The carrying capacity of an environment is the maximum population size of a biological species that can be sustained by that specific environment, given the food, habitat, water, and other resources available. The carrying capacity is defined as the environment's maximal load, which in population ecology corresponds to the population equilibrium, when the number of deaths in a population equals the number of births (as well as immigration and emigration). The effect of carrying capacity on population dynamics is modelled with a logistic function. Carrying capacity is applied to the maximum population an environment can support in ecology, agriculture and fisheries. The term carrying capacity has been applied to a few different processes in the past before finally being applied to population limits in the 1950s. The notion of carrying capacity for humans is covered by the notion of sustainable population. At the global scale, scientific data indicates that humans are living beyond t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Nations General Assembly
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA or GA; french: link=no, Assemblée générale, AG) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), serving as the main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ of the UN. Currently in its 77th session, its powers, composition, functions, and procedures are set out in Chapter IV of the United Nations Charter. The UNGA is responsible for the UN budget, appointing the non-permanent members to the Security Council, appointing the UN secretary-general, receiving reports from other parts of the UN system, and making recommendations through resolutions. It also establishes numerous subsidiary organs to advance or assist in its broad mandate. The UNGA is the only UN organ wherein all member states have equal representation. The General Assembly meets under its president or the UN secretary-general in annual sessions at the General Assembly Building, within the UN headquarters in New York City. The main part of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Future Generations
Future generations are cohorts of hypothetical people not yet born. Future generations are contrasted with current and past generations, and evoked in order to encourage thinking about intergenerational equity. The moral patienthood of future generations has been argued for extensively among philosophers, and is thought of as an important, neglected cause by the effective altruism community. The term is often used in describing the conservation or preservation of cultural heritage or natural heritage. The sustainability and climate movements have adopted the concept as a tool for enshrining principles of long-term thinking into law. The concept is often connected to indigenous thinking as a principle for ecological action, such as the seven generation concept attributed to Iroquois tradition. Sources The term refers to the impact which the currently living generation has on the world which future generations will live in, the world they will inherit from humans living today. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Triple Bottom Line
The triple bottom line (or otherwise noted as TBL or 3BL) is an accounting framework with three parts: social, environmental (or ecological) and economic. Some organizations have adopted the TBL framework to evaluate their performance in a broader perspective to create greater business value.Slaper, Timothy F. and Hall, Tanya J. (2011)"The Triple Bottom Line: What Is It and How Does It Work?"''Indiana Business Review''. Spring 2011, Volume 86, No. 1. Business writer John Elkington claims to have coined the phrase in 1994. Background In traditional business accounting and common usage, the "bottom line" refers to either the "profit" or "loss", which is usually recorded at the very bottom line on a statement of revenue and expenses. Over the last 50 years, environmentalists and social justice advocates have struggled to bring a broader definition of bottom line into public consciousness by introducing full cost accounting. For example, if a corporation shows a monetary profit, but t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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