Rural Development is a priority in Europe and it is supported by specific, financial programmes. At the same time, sustainability is the key word for the European Union to construct programmes and policies for all human activities. However, measuring sustainability of rural areas is not easy, due to their particular features. The improvement of knowledge on sustainability in rural areas is impo...

The 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg called for a comprehensive set of programs focusing on sustainable consumption and production. According to world leaders, these programs should rely on life cycle assessment (LCA) to promote sustainable patterns of production and consumption. Cleaner production is a well-established activity, and it uses LCA. UNEP, the European ...

The 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg called for a comprehensive set of programs focusing on sustainable consumption and production. According to world leaders, these programs should rely on life cycle analysis (LCA) to promote sustainable patterns of production and consumption. Cleaner production is a wellestablished activity and it uses LCA. UNEP, the European Unio...

Many cultivation practices have been improved in order to decrease environmental burdens of paddy rice production in Japan. Therefore, the importance of life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impacts of whole production systems particularly that of rice production has increased. However, the applications of LCA to rice production are still limited, although rice is the staple f...

Sustainability becomes the key towards success of manufacturing industries now. Besides increasing efficiency of sustainable industrial processes, sustainable consumption becomes an important complementary strategy for making economies more sustainable gradually. Hence, the research in sustainable production and consumption (SPaC) keeps emerging and the approach of information transition became...

Geothermal resources have the potential of contributing significantly to sustainable development in many parts of the world. Sustainable management of a geothermal resource involves utilization at a rate, which may be maintained for a very long time (100300 years). The energy production potential of geothermal systems is primarily determined by the pressure decline caused by production. Overexp...

The Green Revolution, through the adoption of new crop varieties, irrigation, and agrochemicals, saved about 1 billion people from famine by increasing global food production (FAO 2011). We now recognize that these enormous gains in agricultural production were accompanied by harm to agriculture’s natural resource base, jeopardizing our future ability to meet human food, fuel, and fiber needs f...