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The special issue is about Managing the Trilogy of Business, Economy, and Environment

Porto Alegre city, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul State, is an important medical, educational, and technological hub in Brazil. However, Porto Alegre faces critical challenges in achieving adequate environmental sanitation, hampering the development of the city, and negatively impacting the most socially vulnerable segments of the population. Although Porto Alegre’s sanitation plan aims at universal access to sewage collection and treatment services by 2035, some of the city’s sanitation indicators have deteriorated in recent years compared to other Brazilian cities. The inadequate or lack of proper sanitation (e.g., shortcomings in sewage collection and treatment, suboptimal management of solid waste, deficiencies in the distribution of treated water) contribute to the proliferation of disease vectors like mosquitoes and to the spread of infectious and parasitic diseases (e.g., toxoplasmosis, leishmaniasis, arboviral diseases). Recently, Porto Alegre’s population experienced a significant number of dengue infection cases. Climate change, social issues, and unplanned urbanization will further favor disease transmission in the region. In this Review, we provide an overview concerning the ecological, socio-economic, and public health aspects of Porto Alegre, drawing attention to the insufficient environmental sanitation in the city, a neglected problem by local authorities. We argue that this issue needs to be seriously addressed if Porto Alegre wants to realistically achieve sustainable development, protecting ecosystems and human health.

International environmental policy has failed to reverse climate change, resource depletion and the generalized decline of biodiversity and ecological life support systems. This paper traces economic roots of current environmental problems and examines the evolution of sustainability policy since the publication of Club of Rome’s report Limits to growth and the celebration of the first Earth summit in Stockholm in 1972 to the publication of UNEP’s Green economy report and the celebration of the last Earth summit in Rio 2012. Our emphasis is on the evolving framing of the relations between growth and the environment and the role of markets and states in the sustainability policy agenda. We review influential policy documents and Earth summit declarations since the early 1970s. Three major changes are identified in international sustainability discourse: (1) an analytical shift from a notion of growth versus the environment to a notion of growth for the environment, (2) a shift in focus from direct public regulation to market-based instruments, and (3) a shift from a political to a technocratic discourse. We note that attempts in sustainability policy to address the conflict between growth and the environment have pulled back severely since the 1970s and discuss the observed patterns of change in relation to changes in the balance of political and ideological forces. We conclude summarizing main insights from the review and discussing perspectives of the sustainability debate on growth and the environment.

We live under the illusion of progress: as long as GDP is going up and prices stay low, we accept poverty and pollution as unfortunate but inevitable byproducts of a successful economy.In fact, the infallibility of the free market and the necessity of endless growth are so ingrained in the public consciousness that they seem like scientific fact.

Ideas and concepts have been a driving force in human progress, and they may be the most important legacy of the United Nations. UN ideas have set past, present, and future international agendas in many global economic and social arenas and have also led to initiatives and actions that have improved the quality of human life. This capstone volume draws upon findings of the other 14 books in the acclaimed United Nations Intellectual History Project Series. The authors not only assess the development and implementation of UN ideas regarding sustainable economic development and human security, but also apply lessons learned to suggest ways in which the United Nations can play a fuller role in confronting the challenges of human survival with dignity in the 21st century.