Setting the Stage for Sustainabilty: A Citizen's Handbook

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$77.95
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ISBN 9781574441871
Cat# SL1876
 

Features

  • Encourages readers to view conflict as a natural occurrence
  • Emphasizes the importance of a shift in personal consciousness -- from being self-centered to being other-centered
  • Offers positive and constructive ways of looking at potential obstacles to building a sustainable community
  • Invites readers to begin setting the stage for sustainable communities, in harmony with the rest of the world
  • Summary

    As humans, we make choices. With change as a constant, we are continually presented with a number of choices, and we must choose. The change represented by the divergence of humanity from the rest of the world is rapidly growing, and in need of transformation. Setting the Stage for Sustainable Community Development is a guide for that transformation, which can help to create a sense of "place" where it did not previously exist.
    This invaluable text looks at resolving environmental conflicts through a "transformative" rather than a "problem-solving" approach. The transformative approach emphasizes the capacity of facilitation for personal growth. The text analyzes good and bad institutionalized social patterns in an ecological sense. The authors believe that through positive thinking and the willingness to take risks, we can become creative forces in our communities and in the world.

    Table of Contents

    Preface

  • Returning Home
  • The Concept of Community
    True Community is Founded on a Sense of Place, History, and Trust
    Local Community Under Stress
    Shades of Community, A Lesson from Birds
    The Existence of Community Depends on How We Treat One Another
  • Resolving Conflicts
    Social/Environmental Sustainability and Conflict
    Can Destructive Conflicts be Resolved?
    Resolving Destructive Environmental Conflict
    Facilitation at the Crossroad
    Compromise and the Point of Balance
    A Curriculum of Compassion and Justice
  • Communication
    Language as a Tool
    Silence and the Need to be Heard
    The Basic Elements of Communication
    Barriers to Communication
    Good Communication
  • Beginning to Think About Economics and Sustainability
    Understanding Some Economic Concepts
    Identifying Our World View
    Economic Growth from the Planetary Scale to the Personal
  • The Language of Common Economic Concepts
    The General Role of Semantics
    The Terms
  • Distribution is the Key to Economic Sustainability
    An Economy in a Nutshell
    Economic Feasibility
  • Human Relationships are the Social Glue of a Community
    Intrapersonal
    Interpersonal
    Between People and the Environment
    Between People in the Present and those of the Future
  • Social Governance
    Democracy as the Context for Social Relationships
    The Role of Democratic Government
  • A Shared Vision - The Gateway to a Community's Future
    Through the Eyes of an Insect
    Questions We Need to Ask
    Visions, Goals, and Objectives
  • Preparing to Implement Sustainable Community
    What are Some of the Questions that Need Asking as We Prepare to Embark on Our Journey Toward Sustainable Community Development?
    What Sources of Energy are Available to Our Community?
    What Social Capital is Available within Our Community?
    How Can Specialties be Sustainably Fit into a General Community?
    What is Necessary to Build a Community in an Intelligent, Moral Way?
    When is Enough, Enough?
    Are the Consequences of our Decisions Reversible, and if so, to What Degree?
    How Will the Things we Want to Introduce into Our Community's Environment Affect Its Future?
    How Much Waste can we Convert into Food for Microorganisms?
    Will Planning Benefit us as a Community?
    Why Monitor for Sustainability?
    Summary and Conclusion
    End