Emerging Economies and Challenges to Sustainability: Theories, strategies, local realities

Arve Hansen · Ulrikke Wethal

Oct 2014 · Routledge

About this ebook

The rise of emerging economies represents a challenge to traditional global power balances and raises the question of how we can combine sustainability with continued economic growth. Understanding this global shift and its impact on the environment is the paramount contemporary challenge for development-oriented researchers and policy makers alike. This book breaks new ground by combining scholarship on the role of emerging economies with research on sustainable development.

The book investigates how the development strategies of emerging economies challenge traditional development theory and sustainability discourses. With regional introductions and original case studies from South Asia, East Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, it discusses how to conceptualise sustainable development in the global race for economic prosperity. What characterises the development strategies of emerging economies, and what challenges are these posing for global sustainable development? How can emerging economies shed light on the global challenges, dilemmas and paradoxes of the relationship between socio-economic improvements and environmental degradation?

This book will be a valuable resource for researchers and postgraduates in development studies, geography, economics and environmental studies.

About the author

Arve Hansen is a Research Fellow in interdisciplinary development studies and geography at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway.

Ulrikke Wethal is a Research Fellow in development and economic geography at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway.