Road to Sustainability

Federico Maria Pulselli is a researcher in environmental and cultural heritage chemistry in the Department of Chemical and Biosystems Technologies at the Unviersity of Siena, Italy. Simone Bastianoni is a professor of environmental and cultural heritage chemistry in the Department of Chemical and Biosystems Technologies at the Uniersity of Siena, Italy. He received his MS degree in Electronical Engineering at the University of Padua in 1990. In 1995 he received a Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences at the Universities of Siena and Perugia. He was researcher in Environmental Chemistry at the University of Siena (1997-2005), and Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry (2005-2006) at the University of Siena. His research focuses on the use of sustainability indicators based on thermodynamics, the application of thermodynamics to ecological systems and of kinetic models to systems of environmental relevance. He is author of more than 80 papers published in international journals. Nadia Marchettini is a professor of environmental and ecultural heritage chemistry in the Department of Chemical and Biosystems Technologies at the Uniersity of Siena, Italy. Professor Marchettini received an MS in Biology and a Ph.D. Chemistry from the University of Siena where the professor's research focuses on nonlinear dynamics, with applications in the fields of chemistry, biology and the environment, in the field of nulear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, applied to biological systems, and in the field of environmental chemistry, with particular attention to the role of photosynthesis and of entropy, to the energy analysis of biomass,and to the thermodynamic analysis and study of energy flow in the ecosystem, as well as modelling the physical-chemical parameters involved in those processes that are of biological and environmental importance. She is associate editor of the WIT Press series Advances in Ecological Sciences. Enzo Tiezzi is a full professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Siena and author or co-author of five other books (The End of Time, The Essence of Time, Beauty and Science, Steps towards an evolutionary physics, and City out of Chaos) in the field of sustainability, as well as some 500 articles published in major scientific journals. A former Fulbright scholar, he was a member of the group of 25 scientists, who developed the concept of "sustainable development", first in Stockholm and Barcelona, then at the World Bank in Washington and, finally, at the ASPEN Institute in the United States. He is currently an editor of the Inaternational Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics and chief editor of the WIT Press series The Sustainable World

• Presentations: Environment, welfare and lifestyle ISEW - for a sustainable Province of Rimini The Road to Sustainability: GDP and Future Generations Preface Part I: Foundations The megaptera's song, or what the GDP does not tell us; Economics and environmental sensibility; The foundations of sustainability; Sustainable management of resources: commons, knowledge and nature; Thermodynamics and the economics system: autarchy and globalisation; The cube and the living system; Transdisciplinarity Part II: Methods 'Measuring' sustainability; Plus and minus of sustainability: the index of sustainable economic welfare Part III: Applications ISEW in the Province of Modena; ISEW in the Province of Rimini; Beyond the threshold Conclusion