This publication provides an overview of global and regional environmental issues policy decisions during 2009.

This booklet discusses how energy sufficiency is the best solution for reducing energy consumption and waste. It presents policies for reducing global energy consumption such as energy auditing, phasing out incandescent light bulbs, combined heat/cooling energy and power, carbon-negative cooking, smart metering, area road pricing, and other measures.

According to the abstract, the purpose of this paper is to provide a quantitative research methodology for analyzing the costs of dealing with climate change.

Urbanization is a global phenomenon that has transformed and continues to alter landscapes and the ways in which societies function and develop. For this issue of UGEC Viewpoints, the editors collected case-studies presented at the Open Meeting that span across regions and themes: from Australia and the United States, as well as the less developed nations in Africa, megacities of Asia such as Dhaka, Bangladesh and Delhi, India, vulnerable coastal areas of the Yucatan Peninsula, and the largest rainforest in the world, the Brazilian Amazon. Currently, more than half of the world's population lives in cities; the United Nations projects that by 2030 the world will advance to the 60% urbanization threshold. Rapid urbanization effects will not only be present within the immediate locations (cities and their metropolitan areas), but will be experienced regionally and globally. The UGEC project seeks to better understand these implications and the complex dynamic systems of urban areas that affect and are affected by global environmental change (e.g., climate change, natural disasters, loss of biodiversity, freshwater ecosystem decline, desertification, and land degradation). Several commonalities are readily identifiable in the authors' research, some of which include an attention to the roles of the governance structures within …