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This paper reviews the latest information and perspectives on global phosphorus scarcity. Phosphorus is essential for food production and modern agriculture currently sources phosphorus fertilizers from finite phosphate rock. The 2008 food and phosphate fertilizer price spikes triggered increased concerns regarding the depletion timeline of phosphate rock reserves. While estimates range from 30 to 300 years and are shrouded by lack of publicly available data and substantial uncertainty, there is a general consensus that the quality and accessibility of remaining reserves are decreasing and costs will increase. This paper clarifies common sources of misunderstandings about phosphorus scarcity and identifies areas of consensus. It then asks, despite some persistent uncertainty, what would it take to achieve global phosphorus security? What would a 'hard-landing' response look like and how could preferred 'soft-landing' responses be achieved? INSET: Life's bottleneck: Key features of a critical element, phosphorus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the millennium, the world's political leadership adopted sustainable development as a leading model for societal development. However, the terms "sustainable development", "sustainability" and "sustainable" are sometimes over- and misused despite wide consensus about the concept's meaning among sustainability scholars and practitioners. While the concept allows various sustainability views to co-exist, random conceptualizations which do not respect the fundamental sustainability principles undermine the concept's objective to steer action. This lack of understanding of sustainability arguably inhibits its practical realization and a proper understanding of sustainability is urgently needed. In this paper we aim to contribute to a better understanding of sustainability by adopting a bird's eye perspective. We review the rich contemporary literature, with a specific focus on the terminology, genesis, fundamental principles, mainstream views of sustainability, and several governing aspects. Further, using the evolving body of sustainability literature, the paper provides arguments to combat common misconceptions of sustainability. OPEN ACCESS INSET: Box 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability is a "contested" concept introduced at the beginning of the 18th century in German forestry circles concerned about sustainable harvests and rebranded in 1987 as "sustainable development" by the Brundtland Report, which defined it as harmonious economic, social, and ecological development that enhances both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations. However, after more than three decades of sustainable development, humanity is on an unsustainable path featuring rampant ecosystem damage, rising social inequality, and harmful cultural homogenization. This paper is a book review of Fred P. Gale's Political Economy of Sustainability, a book published in 2018 by Edward Elgar Publishers. The book advances the innovative idea that the current lack of progress in implementation of the sustainable development goals is due to the narrow understanding by individuals, firms, states, and political parties of the values underlying sustainability. The book thus starts a much-needed conversation about economic values, a conversation ousted from the neo-classical economics discipline in the late 19th century by the marginalist thinkers who wanted to make it a positive science. The book identifies four elemental economic values—exchange value, labor value, use value, and function value—and argues that basing our socio-economic and political development on only one type of value with the exclusion of the others has led to the current dangerously unsustainable path humankind is on. Achieving sustainability value requires a balanced integration of all four types of values in all deliberations about socio-economic activities. How can this be accomplished? The author proposes a pragmatic solution in the form of a "tetravaluation" process, a dialogue involving multiple value holders able to reflexively negotiate and compromise until the pluralistic sustainability value is discovered and accepted by all the parties. The book challenges the unsustainable functioning of existing economic, political, and cultural institutions and invites a rethinking of their governance, which should deliberately embrace the pluralistic value of sustainability. The tetravaluation process has the potential to generate sustainable choices and inform better policy decisions able to protect at the same time the proponents of exchange value (consumers), the promoters of labor value (workers, producers), the beneficiaries of use value (communities), and the holder of functional values (the environment). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Air Pollution Prevention and Control: Bioreactors and Bioenergy," by Christian Kennes and Maria C. Veiga.

Business management and, more generally, decision makers, are increasingly aware of the importance of corporate social responsibility and ethical choices within the strategic business vision. The number of tools (e.g., board of directors, organization actions), levers (e.g., cultural, social example of direct boss) and rules (e.g., protocols, certifications, law decrees) available, however, makes it difficult for management to identify the set of best practices to be adopted within its own organization. Further, the task is even more difficult when management is called upon to choose these tools for life-long learning programs intended for company staff as well as for new hires. The Italian Association for Managerial Training has promoted a survey that pays particular attention to the «ethical choices» and «behaviors» to be adopted in the organization's management and their training programs. The results of the survey have been modelled through «Carroll's conceptual framework» that, as known, is made of two parts: the most cited CSR pyramid and the least mentioned, but equally important, descriptive types of management. In this work, it has been employed a two steps multivariate analysis, employing an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). EFA has been used to identify Carroll's descriptive types (or profiles), while SEMs were employed to verify the plausibility of the causal models that represent, in turn, thought experiments simulating «ethical dilemmas» useful for the company's management during its decision making. The models identified, readable in the form of simple «heuristics», are interpreted in the light of Carroll's «descriptive types» of management (i.e., moral, immoral and amoral). Thereby, any organization, even of a small size, interested in adopting «sustainable policies», can make use of the identified models to establish which guidelines can be adopted by the management during her/his decision making, and, according to Carroll, «to isolate the ethical or moral component of CSR and relate it to perspectives that reflect the three major ethical approaches to management», with the overall objective of managing with «stakeholders in an ethical or moral fashion». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safeguarding optimal living conditions for aquatic organisms is one of the most important principles of sustainable water management. Ever-increasing water exploitation, mainly for water supply, irrigation, and renewable energy, has degraded freshwater ecosystems, notably rivers. Further, the climate extremes and water scarcity exacerbated by climate change induce additional stress in freshwater ecosystems and may stimulate conflicts among water users. [Extracted from the article]

This book is written by a retired grid engineer and deals with renewable sources of energy and the instability of the electrical distribution grid. Derek Birkett carefully goes through the arguments about the electrical supply and the effect of intermittent and variable renewable sources of energy on grid stability. As a result of investment in renewable energy and the increasing costs of carbon taxes levied on fossil fuel fired generation, the government has created a situation which is very expensive for consumers and industry, and is unsustainable. The government has intervened in the energy market and provided subsidies and policy support for renewable energy without considering the consequences for the stability of the electrical grid system. The government has no strategic vision of the future for energy generation and no expertise to draw upon. Consumers experience increasing energy costs, power outages and blackouts which will be costly and hard to recover from. Derek states quite clearly that "... the state should no longer use environmental regulation for political purposes unless there is a clear imperative for national well-being and security." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]