In the Anthropocene sustainable development responds to socio-economic, environmental and political crises provoked by humankind due to global warming and the great acceleration of human intervention in ecosystems. This book introduces readers to current debates on sustainable development and to a holistic and multidisciplinary approach. Regional integration and supranational institutions are fundamental for sustainable development. The democratisation of the international system requires a new multilateralism. Global problems of demography, economic ideology of unlimited growth, the prevailing technocratic paradigm, consumerism, problems of waste, fossil fuels, industrial food production, use of fertilisers, water management and climate change are discussed, and the importance of multilateral agreements for security, sustainable peace and development is explored. This planetary crisis may be solved by international cooperation based on the UN sustainable development goals. This book - provides a concise synthesis of the main subjects of sustainable development studies- links development studies to multilateral diplomacy as practised by UN bodies and organisations- gives a new holistic and multidisciplinary approach to environmental and social sciences in the Anthropocene epoch.

Autorentext
Luis Alberto Padilla Menendez is an scholar from Guatemala, with a University degree in law and social sciences from the State University of San Carlos and a Social Sciences doctorate from the University of Paris, (Pantheon Sorbonne) and a diploma on Conflict Resolution from Uppsala University (Sweden). Currently he is president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) and former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP). He has a diplomatic career at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Guatemala, where he is currently the Director of the Diplomatic Academy and has been vice Minister in the past as well as ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre and ambassador to Austria; ambassador to the Russian Federation; to the Netherlands and permanent representative to the UN in Geneva. Dr. Padilla has also an academic career and currently he is professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala and director of a research seminar on sustainable development at postgraduate level in same University. He is also a former professor of theory and history of international relations in both the Catholic and the State University of San Carlos (Guatemala)and a former director of IRIPAZ's revue Estudios Internacionale. Actually he is the director of Politica Internacional (revue of the Diplomatic Academy ) and has several articles published in both revues as well as in other Latin American academic revues and books. Dr. Padilla is author of the university text book Paz y Conflicto en el Siglo XXI. Teoría de las Relaciones Internacionales (Guatemala, IRIPAZ, 2009) and he has also published some articles in English, among them Peace Making and Conflict Transformation in Guatemala (in the book of Hayward Alker, Ted Robert Gurr & Kumar Rupesinghe: Journeys through conflict: narratives and lessons, Rowman & Littlefield publishers inc., New York & Oxford, 2001) and an article (Human Rights and Radical Democracy) that will be published soon in a book by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Springer.

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