In the early 1600s, a newly-unified Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate had just emerged from centuries of civil war and was staring down a multitude of problems: severe environmental degradation, exhausted farmland, depleted forests, population growth, famine and reduced agricultural production.
Just Enough: Lessons from Japan for Sustainable Living, Architecture and Design, by Azby Brown,232 pagesSTONE BRIDGE PRESS, Nonfiction.
Two hundred years later, Japan had successfully reversed deforestation, increased agricultural yields and grown its population while managing to keep them fed, housed, clothed, educated and healthier than before.