Climate change has developed into a key concern of a globalised world, with huge attentionin popular and media discourses and with consequences in virtually all fields ofscience and politics. As a cross-cutting issue, climate change is connecting distant andsometimes highly controversial fields....

Work, in all its manifestations and with its very different returns, is an indispensable featureof human existence. Consequently, labour policy and social policy are concerned with shapingthe immediate conditions of everyday life. The composite term "labour and social standards"indicates that...

Work, in all its manifestations and with its very different returns, is an indispensable featureof human existence. Consequently, labour policy and social policy are concerned with shapingthe immediate conditions of everyday life. The composite term "labour and social standards"indicates that...

Since the mid-1990s, the German Federal Government has been trying to implement the liber-alization of waste management, against the resistance of municipalities. But instead of creating a new fitting regulative environment for the sector, the strong position of the municipal waste management...

Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) as a means of enhancing sustainability has been the topic of a model project promoted by the EU during the late 1990s. Meanwhile, all member states areurged by an EU recommendation to develop national ICZM strategies, based on a set of criteria derived...

In industrializing countries new groups of consumers with remarkable purchasing power are emerging. Representing a “new middle class” they are seen as a carrier and promoter of a so-called “western way of life” beyond the OECD countries. They are presented as having a consumerist...

The laws of thermodynamics constrain transformation of materials and energy, and thus have implications for material and energy use in the economy, for environmental impact, and for policy. This paper provides an overview over the applications of concepts from thermodynamics in economics at the...