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Preface

Nanotechnology, if applied strategically and carefully, can provide sustainable solutions to many global challenges and lead us toward sustainable development. Sustainable innovations derived from nanotechnology applications can help us achieve several of the 17 sustainable development goals (UN‐SDGs), a set of forward‐looking goals for the world to adopt in order to achieve economic, social, and environmental sustainability. The SDGs were formally adopted by the United Nations in 2015, which garnered universal support from all UN member states. The agenda of actions to make the SDGs achievable by 2030 exhorts all nations adopt appropriate policy changes to their respective national development goals and plans (Source: United Nations Development Programme: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable‐development‐goals/background/). The major challenges the world is facing now, such as extreme weather, droughts, wildfires, devastating floods, sea‐level rise, loss of biological diversity, recurrence of global pandemics, and increasing poverty and income/wealth inequality within and between nations, if not addressed immediately, will lead to an uncertain future for the present and future generations.

The world is facing challenges on all three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, social, and environmental. More than one billion people are still living in extreme poverty, income, and wealth inequality. The covid‐led shut down of the global economy is felt most acutely in developing nations, and hundreds of millions of people who had escaped poverty over the past two decades are now being pushed back into poverty. At the same time, unsustainable consumption and production patterns over many decades have resulted in huge economic and environmental costs as the externalities associated with these unsustainable practices have been left unresolved. These externalities in the form of carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels and billions of tons of plastics and other consumption wastes have ended up in our oceans, landfills, and natural landscapes, to name a few major problems. Life on our planet is under threat from these and other sources of environmental degradation.

Achieving sustainable development will require concerted global actions to deliver on the legitimate aspirations for further economic and social progress, requiring economic growth and employment while strengthening environmental protection. Sustainable development must be inclusive and should take special care of the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable. Strategies need to be ambitious, action oriented, collaborative, and capable of adapting to different levels of development.

That means we need to systemically change consumption and production patterns, which, inter alia, will entail significant price corrections; encourage preservation of natural capital; reduce inequality; and strengthen economic governance.

(Taken from World Economic and Social Survey 2013: Sustainable Development Challenges https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2843WESS2013.pdf)

Continuation of the current development strategies will not be sufficient to achieve sustainable development. Moreover, relying on “business as usual” scenarios presents clear risks, because evidence is mounting against the status quo such that:

1 The impact of climate change threatens to escalate in the absence of adequate safeguards, and there is a need to promote integrated and sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystems and take mitigation and adaptation action in keeping with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities;

2 Hunger and malnourishment, while decreasing in many developing countries, remain persistent in other countries, and food and nutrition security continues to be an elusive goal for too many;

3 Income inequality within and among many countries has been rising and has reached an extremely high level, invoking the specter of heightened tension and social conflict;

4 Rapid urbanization, especially in developing countries, calls for major changes in the way in which urban development is designed and managed as well as substantial increases in public and private investments in urban infrastructure and services;

5 Energy needs are likely to remain unmet for hundreds of millions of households, unless significant progress in ensuring access to modern energy services is achieved;

6 Recurrence of financial crises needs appropriate measure of prevention, and the financial system has to be redirected toward promoting access to long‐term financing for investments required to achieve sustainable development.

One of the solutions for addressing these challenges is the “Need for inclusive strategies and technology innovation.” In recent years, nanotechnology applications in major industries and occupations have grown significantly.

Nanotechnology has shown significant potential for resolving global challenges for sustainable development in many areas, such as water and sanitation, environmental pollution, soil degradation, health care challenges, food and agriculture, animal welfare, and deterioration of biological diversity, among others.

In this volume, we focus nanotechnology applications in three areas:

1 Nanotechnology and eco‐friendly biobased products;

2 Nanotechnology and eco‐friendly manufactured products;

3 Models and ways to understand the life cycle and risk assessment of manufactured nanomaterials and nanoengineering with special reference to global sustainability.

Given the enormous scientific and technological advances in this area, it will be impossible to cover all aspects of nanotechnology applications in one volume. Nevertheless, nanotechnology, which is expanding fast, will definitely have impact on environment and sustainability. We focus, specifically, on how the researches and innovations in nanotechnology will affect the environment. The book consists of several chapters authored by experts who are working in this area of research and development. We strived to cover as many areas as possible where nanotechnology made lasting impact, with particular focus on these impacts positively affecting global sustainability.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks and express our gratitude to all the authors who have contributed the chapters to this book; without their support, we would not have completed this book within the timeframe that we had set out at the outset. We would also like to extend our sincere appreciation to John Wiley & Sons, their editorial, production, and marketing teams who spared no efforts to make this book project a success.

We would like to thank our families who supported our efforts in bringing out this book. Our thanks also go to our respective home institutions that allowed us the time and freedom to complete this task.

We believe this book will be an excellent reference volume for people who are working in the area of nanotechnology and sustainability.

We believe we did our best to make sure the book is free of errors and faults; however, if you the reader find any mistakes or factual errors, we request you to bring them to our notice, so that we can correct and update the content in the next edition.

With best wishes to our readers

Yashwant V. Pathak, Govindan Parayil, and Jayvadan K. Patel