Abstract

With growing evidence of unsustainable use of the world’s resources, such as hydrocarbon reserves, and related environmental pollution, as in alarming climate change predictions, sustainable development is arguably the prominent issue of the 21st century.  This volume gives a wide ranging introduction focusing on the arid Gulf region, where the challenges of sustainable development are starkly evident. The Gulf relies on non-renewable oil and gas exports to supply the world’s insatiable CO2 emitting energy demands, and has built unsustainable conurbations with water supplies dependent on energy hungry desalination plants and deep aquifers pumped beyond natural replenishment rates. Sustainable Development has an interdisciplinary focus, bringing together university faculty and government personnel from the Gulf, Europe, and North America -- including social and natural scientists, environmentalists and economists, architects and planners -- to discuss topics such as sustainable natural resource use and urbanization, industrial and technological development, economy and politics, history and geography. 

“This is clearly the most comprehensive overview of sustainable development in the Gulf, a strategic region within the global economy…What is particularly innovative is the last section on cultural issues, ranging from collaborative research methods to indigenous knowledge… the inclusion of health issues, together with a discussion of the ‘cultural turn’ in sustainability, including participatory approaches, make this book an exemplar of the next generation of thought and knowledge development in the area of sustainable development.”  ·  Carl Maida, University of California, Los Angeles

“[This volume] amounts to a well edited, comprehensive, collection of sustainable development papers, strongly introduced and concluded by the editor, on a region that surely no one could doubt can only gain from the salutary environmental analysis time after time it offers… While a regional study, it is fully alert to current theoretical issues in the general sustainable development literature at large while at the same contributing to them. It is… certainly deserving to become required reading for all tertiary education institutions.”  ·  Raymond Apthorpe, SOAS University of London 

Paul Sillitoe FBA is Professor of Anthropology at Durham University and former Shell Chair in Sustainable Development at Qatar University.  His research interests focus on natural resources management, appropriate technology, and sustainable development, and he seeks to further the incorporation of local knowledge in development, having experience with several international development agencies.  His recent books include ‘Grass-Clearing Man’: A Factional Ethnography of Life in the New Guinea Highlands(2009 with J. Sillitoe, Waveland Press) and From land to mouth: the agricultural ‘economy’ of the Wola of the New Guinea Highlands (2010 ,Yale University Press).