Archive for the 'Book' Category

Call for Book Reviewers

Published on October 28, 2011 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments Tags: .

Common Ground Publishing is seeking distinguished peer reviewers to evaluate book manuscripts submitted to the On Sustainability Book Series.

As part of our commitment to intellectual excellence and a rigorous review process, Common Ground sends book manuscripts that have received initial editorial approval to peer reviewers to further evaluate and provide constructive feedback. The comments and guidance that these reviewers supply is invaluable to our authors and an essential part of the publication process.

Common Ground recognizes the important role of referees by acknowledging book reviewers as members of the On Sustainability  Book Series Editorial Review Board for a period of at least one year. The list of members of the Editorial Review Board will be posted on our website. In addition, Common Ground also offers a US$200 voucher for each completed review which meets the standards set out by the Commissioning Editor at the commencement of assignment. Vouchers may be used in the Common Ground Bookstore or for registration at one of our international conferences.

If you would like to referee book manuscripts submitted to On Sustainability,  please email books@onsustainability.com. Please make sure to include:

  1. a brief description of your professional credentials
  2. a list of your areas of interest and expertise
  3. a copy of your CV with current contact details

If we feel you are qualified and we require refereeing for manuscripts within your purview, we will contact you.

Building Our Sustainable Cities

Published on July 17, 2011 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Building Our Sustainable Cities by Rita Yi Man Li is now available as part of the On Sustainability series.

Sustainable development has become a hot topic worldwide in recent decades. Following the Copenhagen Summit, politicians and the general public were once again faced with the reality of inevitable climate change. Is there anything we can do to stop global warming? Are there any possible ways to achieve the goal of zero carbon? What can we, as laymen in the global village, do in the coming years so that future generations can enjoy a natural environment similar to ours?

This book consists of three parts. The first part is an introduction that provides a general overview of sustainable development in China, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. The second part introduces the concept of sustainability in the built environment. The third part of this book focuses on sustainable land use planning in Hong Kong.

Building Our Sustainable Cities

Published on June 10, 2011 in Book, Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Building Our Sustainable Cities by Rita Yi Man Li is now available as part of the On Sustainability series.

Sustainable development has become a hot topic worldwide in recent decades. Following the Copenhagen Summit, politicians and the general public were once again faced with the reality of inevitable climate change. Is there anything we can do to stop global warming? Are there any possible ways to achieve the goal of zero carbon? What can we, as laymen in the global village, do in the coming years so that future generations can enjoy a natural environment similar to ours?

This book consists of three parts. The first part is an introduction that provides a general overview of sustainable development in China, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. The second part introduces the concept of sustainability in the built environment. The third part of this book focuses on sustainable land use planning in Hong Kong.

Thomas Wiedmann reviews ‘The sustainability practitioner’s guide to input-output analysis’

Published on January 21, 2011 in Book and Newsletter. 1 Comment

Any questions about input-output analysis? You might have heard about ‘IOA’, or ‘environmentally extended IOA’, but might not be sure what exactly it means and for what and how it can be used. For those who would like to know more about it – and indeed for those who are already familiar with IOA! – there is a book, at last, that will give you plenty of answers. The Sustainability Practitioner’s Guide to Input-Output Analysis has been written for the non-technical reader with an interest in learning about and applying a modelling technique that has gained in momentum in the environmental arena over the past decade but has remained somewhat elusive to practitioners outside the research field.

I’m saying ‘at last’ because such a generalised representation of input-output theory, practice and applications to questions of sustainability has not been compiled before.

The review continues

The book impressively demonstrates the versatility of IOA and its usefulness for the sustainability practitioner. It is divided in five distinctive parts which cover the facets of sustainability practice. The first part introduces the concept and the practicalities of IOA, covering fundamental operations such as the compilation of IO tables, the analysis of supply chains or the assumptions inherent in the technique. Novices and IOA practitioners alike will appreciate the brief resume of Wassily Leontief’s life, the founder of modern input-output economics and Nobel Laureate. Leontief’s legacy seems more alive than ever, in particular because he always intended and foresaw the use of IOA for environmental analyses. Part one also explains the differences between IOA and other ways of undertaking life-cycle analyses.

Part two is an excellent example of how theory can be translated into practice. Real-world examples of footprint analysis and economy-wide triple-bottom-line accounting demonstrate impressively the versatility of IOA. It is not a coincidence that the increase in environmental IOA applications in recent years has paralleled an equal rise in the popularity of footprint analyses, most often involving the life-cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions (carbon footprint). The ability of IOA to deliver cost-efficient and comprehensive estimates on all scales from individual via organisational to national scale has helped its application for consumption-based accounting. The examples presented in the book range from Australia to the UK, from company to industry sectors, and from local authority to regional government level. It’s encouraging to see that IOA is not merely presented as the solution to all questions but that practical problems and negative experiences are also described, e.g., in the Australian ‘Balancing Act’ study.  This helps to overcome similar challenges in the future.

Excerpts of the review are from: Wiedmann, T.(2010) ‘The sustainability practitioner’s guide to input-output analysis edited by: Joy Murray and Richard Wood’, International Journal of Sustainable Development, Vol. 13, No.3  pp. 308 – 310.

The Sustainability Practitioner’s Guide to Input-Output Analysis edited by Joy Murray andRichard Wood is available from the On Sustainability imprint.

Series: On Sustainability

Published on August 4, 2010 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments Tags: .

We are accepting book proposals for the imprint On Sustainability.

Common Ground is setting new standards of rigorous academic knowledge creation and scholarly publication.

Unlike other publishers, we’re not interested in the size of potential markets or competition from other books. We’re only interested in the intellectual quality of the work.

If your book is a brilliant contribution to a specialist area of knowledge that only serves a small intellectual community, we still want to publish it. If it is expansive and has a broad appeal, we want to publish it too, but only if it is of the highest intellectual quality.

The Sustainability Practitioner’s Guide to Input-Output Analysis

Published on June 18, 2010 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments Tags: .

input-output-analysis-front1The Sustainability Practitioner’s Guide to Input-Output Analysis edited by Joy Murray and Richard Wood is now available from the On Sustainability imprint.

…this time around success will need to be measured not by how much we can control nature but by how well we can live as part of it. Our e orts in the transition to a sustainable future require decisions that not only acknowledge the ecosphere, but embrace the complexity of our societies and the natural systems that support us.

A vital part of this transition is communication. We need to map and communicate as clearly as possible the impacts of our current trajectory and provide a clear and comprehensive system for tracking the world’s progress towards sustainability…

This book provides an introduction to input-output analysis for sustainability practitioners. It is designed for those with knowledge about the sustainability dilemma we face, but who are unsure about the how of measuring our impacts, tracking our progress and informing the decisions for a sustainable future.

Input-output analysis placed in a transdisciplinary setting is a method that captures the complexities and interdependencies of our social, economic and environmental support systems. Examples of the use of input-output analysis in life-cycle assessment, triple bottom line accounting and carbon and ecological footprints are provided along with an introduction to a range of software tools. In academic circles research has been gathering pace on these methods and issues over the last years. This book brings this state of the art to the decision makers and policy shapers of today.

How the Understanding of Nature Enriches Education and Life

Published on March 30, 2010 in Book. 0 Comments

ruyu-frontLearning Nature: How the Understanding of Nature Enriches Education and Life by Ruyu Hung is now available from the  On Sustainability imprint.

Learning Nature presents exciting scholarship on the exploration of the concept of nature and its implications for education. The author—Ruyu Hung—argues that “nature” is a rich and fundamental source of meaning to enable one to learn to live a meaningful life and yet that what is taught about nature in many conventional curricula is severely limited, resulting in an impoverishment of meaning. The central aim of this book is to provide different approaches to the understanding of nature in order to show the fecund meanings that have rich educational significance and the implications for pedagogy.

Interrogating the educationally meaningful conceptions of nature, this book identifies five themes to anchor our multifarious understandings of nature. Each theme with its implying polarities illuminates the significance of the human conceptualisation of nature as an on-going dynamic and dialectic process. The investigations invite the readers to envisage and reconfigure education so as to accommodate heterogeneous and plural views of nature and reveal the abundance of meaning to be had in different ways of experiencing nature in the context of one’s unique life.


On Sustainability Imprint Launched

Published on May 9, 2009 in Book. 0 Comments

Common Ground Publishing has launched a new imprint, On Sustainability.

You can now submit proposals or completed manuscript submissions of:

Books should be between 30,000 words to 150,000 words in length. They will be published simultaneously in print and electronic formats.