Sustainable Development and Environmental Management

This book presents the new EU approach to environmental management and its attempt to place it in the perspective of sustainable development. China and other large and fast growing economies are putting increasing pressures on global environment, but they are also looking at the European experience with great interest. To critically present this experience can help those countries avoid the mistakes made by developed countries in dealing with the relation between economic growth and environmental protection, and to improve the institutions and tools for better environmental governance.

The variety of issues covered and the wide approach used in this book make it a useful tool for readers who want to place themselves in this perspective, although starting from different backgrounds and levels of knowledge of environmental and sustainability sciences.

Résumé
This book stems from a four-year experience of a Training Programme addressing members of several Chinese governmental Institutions which, given the moment of extremely intense and fast development of their country, consider the issues of environment and sustainable growth among the foremost priorities. In particular, they expressed the need and will to develop policy and mana- ment tools that could lead to a strategy of sustainable growth from an economic, social and environmental point of view. The Programme turned out to be a success (it involved, up to June 2007, more than 2000 trainees from almost all the Provinces of China) precisely because the forces that answered those needs are extremely diverse as to include the academia, national and local governments, public institutions, private companies and international agencies. Following this feature, the book's contributors have been selected among more than 300 professors, researchers, policy makers, and entrepreneurs involved in the Training activities, thus offering different approaches to the key questions of environmental management.

Contenu

Sustainable Development Policies.- Integrated Environmental Policy in the European Union.- The Role of Legal Principles for Environmental Management.- Valuation of Sustainable Development Policies: Social Multi-criteria Evaluation.- Water Management.- The Groundwater Challenge.- Water Services and Water Policy in Italy.- Water Quality Control.- New Approaches to Wastewater Treatment Plants in Italy.- Integrated Policy Approach to Water Supply Management: A Venetian Project.- Air Quality Control.- Monitoring Air Quality in Urban Areas.- Sustainable Mobility: Mitigation of Traffic Originated Pollution.- Waste Management.- Integrated Waste Management. Technologies and Environmental Control.- Economic Analysis of Waste Management Systems in Europe.- Hospital Waste Management.- Energy Efficiency And Renewables.- Solar Energy.- Geothermal Energy.- Renewable Energy from Biomass: Solid Biofuels and Bioenergy Technologies.- Wind Energy.- Power Electronics in Distributed Power.- Energy Optimization of a Building-plant System.- The Sino-Italian Environment & Energy Building (SIEEB): A Model for a New Generation of Sustainable Buildings.- New Policy Schemes to Promote End-use Energy Efficiency in the European Union.- Subsidies and Market Mechanisms in Energy Policy.- CDM - A Policy to Foster Sustainable Development?.- Sustainable Industrial Development.- Industrial Ecology in a Developing Context.- Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA): Integration and Synergy with EMAS Management Systems on the Territory.- Sustainable Urban Development.- General Aspects of Sustainable Urban Development (SUD).- A New Perspective for the Future: Environmental Protection and Sustainability in Urban Planning.- Brownfields Remediation and Reuse: An Opportunity for Urban Sustainable Development.-Agriculture And Natural Resource Management.- Ecological Agriculture: Human and Social Context.- Sustainable Agriculture in the Frame of Sustainable Development: Cooperation between China and Italy.- Economics and Policy of Biodiversity Loss.- Forestry and Rural Development: Global Trends and Applications to the Sino-Italian Context.