Challenges and opportunities at the crossroads of Environmental Sustainability and Economy Research

Perrotti, Daniela [UCL] Verma, Pramit [University of Delhi] Srivastava, K. K. [University of Delhi] Singh, Pardeep [University of Delhi]

Cities occupy only nearly 3% of the world’s land surface. However, they account for over 75% of global natural resource consumption and contribute to about 70% of greenhouse gas emissions (UNEP International Resource Panel). Thus, human activities in cities are drivers of multiple environmental challenges, which are likely to increase with an expected rise to 70-80% of the global urban population by 2050, and their effects extend over all the ecosystems of the world. Cities are human ecosystems where social, economic, biological and ecological components work together forming a system of feedback loops and interactions. These interactions in urban ecosystems are guided through human values, agency, and perceptions. An ecological understanding of cities can help conceptualize them as key socioeconomic and environmental “nodes” where great potential exists for sustainability-oriented innovations in resource management and the mitigation of pollutant emissions, climate change, and other negative externalities of resource consumption. For several decades now, the need for sustainable development has emerged across different systems working in human societies on a global level. However, the challenge remains to integrate the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability. The focus of this Chapter is to read environmental sustainability through a socioeconomic lens. Towards this, the role of transition to innovative socioeconomic models and “metabolic” approaches has been explored here, learning from main insights from the chapters in this book.