The revitalization of the Rogun hydropower station project and launch of an Initial Public Offering has led the water-energy disputes between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to a new stage. While two riparian states advocate their positions from their own perspective, it gives the impression of being...

Many issues relating to the sustainability of environmental resource use are informed by environmental valuation studies with stated preference surveys. Within these, researchers often provide descriptions of <em>status quo </em>conditions which may differ from those perceived by respondents. Ignoring...

The history of maize breeding methods in the USA is reviewed to examine the question of types of maize cultivars in sustainable agriculture. The yield potential of OP cultivars was much higher than national average yields prior to 1930, but hybrid cultivars today often out-yield OP cultivars by...

Independent of the left-right model of ideological structure, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food and agriculture are resented across the political spectrum in Switzerland. In the absence of any real experience with genetically modified (GM) food but faced with continuous exposure to...

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...

Energy Return on Investment (EROI) refers to how much energy is returned from one unit of energy invested in an energy-producing activity. It is a critical parameter for understanding and ranking different fuels. There were a number of studies on EROI three decades ago but relatively little work...

World population is projected to reach its maximum (~10 billion people) by the year 2050. This 45% increase of the current world population (approaching seven billion people) will boost the demand for food and raw materials. However, we live in a historical moment when supply of phosphate,...

Ecodesign offers significant potential to reduce the environmental impacts of products. Whilst some integration of environmental considerations into design occurs in progressive companies when engineering the product, this only represents a small share of the possible design interventions to...

For many reasons, including environmental impacts and the peaking and depletion of the highest grades of fossil energy, it is very important to have sound methods for the evaluation of energy technologies and the profitability of the businesses that utilize them. In this paper we derive...

One of the most common denominators for almost any form of life is the existential need for water. This need has recently received much attention in the frame of sustainability discussions [1,2]. In addition, environmental sustainability and safe access to fresh water is one of the eight United...